cheap way to develop a USB device?

hi look up FT232BM

The Cygnal F32x development kit comes with an evaluation version of the Keil development tools limited to 4K of code. Also includes simple USB example code.

Bob

The Cygnal part is a good option and it does not require the Keil compiler. I have worked with the part using SDCC and it's been great for me. The only strange thing that I have run into is that the Cygnal debugger and the compiler have a different view of which "endianess" is used for the part. If you can see past that, it's fine.

That said, getting a USB Vendor Id value could present a big hurdle to your $500 target.

Adam

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Another good reason to go for the FTDI chips. It's a single chip ready-cooked solution. No worries about USB code and you get Product ID's for free from FTDI. So you use FTDI's Vendor ID and a Product ID which they assign to you upon request (issued in blocks of four). They provide a driver set that can be tailored to your product by putting the right strings in the INF files and by programming the right flags and values in the EEPROM of the chip. And they provide the tools for that too.

Meindert

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The FTDI chip does provide all of these things and it is a good solution if you are looking to use the USB connection only as a custom data channel to a specific application. If you are only working with an embedded host, then this can be a good solution.

However, if you intend for your device to connect to the system as a specific device type (ie. mass storage, HID, etc.), it is generally MUCH easier to handle the custom firmware development and use standard system drivers then to try to connect the FTDI interface through the standard system stack on each of the different operating systems.

Adam

Develop a serial device and then use a serial-to-usb converter. -- Mike