USB information

I found a really good site today with USB information. They cover everything from an intro (USB in a nutshell) to hardware and development kits and resources.

This is the hardware page.

Another good site is usbdeveloper.

They have a great section about how USB works here.

microcontroller

I received my arduino microcontroller several days ago.

The IDE is simple and the arduino is easy to program. I hooked up a 10 LED strip to it and made several programs to display patterns on it.

1. I made a wave program that starts at one end and lights the LEDs sequentially until they are all lit. Then it starts at the same end and turns them off sequentially. The program does that in an endless loop. It looks like a wave of LEDs.

2. I made a binary counter program. It counts up from 0 and displays the binary value on the LEDs. It starts over at zero when it reaches 1023 (all 10 LEDs lit).

3. I made a program that takes serial input from the computer connected to the arduino via the USB cable. The arduino looks like a USB com port to the computer. When you send a '1', the board displays the knight rider pattern. When you send a '2', the board displays the wave pattern. When you send a '3', the board displays the binary counter pattern. You can send a character at any time and the board will reset the LEDs and start the new pattern.