How to interface a PIC microcontroller to a PC via the USB port. Although the concepts are universal, the examples are specifically for use with MikroElektronika’s ‘MikroC Pro for PIC’. PIC18F2550 and PIC18f4550 are famous for their USB Module. To stay ahead you can start with their datasheets.
The most difficult part of this project is exactly what is required to get the PIC microcontroller to communicate with the USB port. The two most important things that absolutely have to be correct are the microcontroller configuration, and the USB device descriptor. If even the smallest thing is incorrect about either of these, communication will not occur.
USB Speed
The original USB 1.0 specification, defined data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbit/s "Low Speed" and 12 Mbit/s "Full Speed". The 12 Mbit/s data rate was intended for higher-speed devices such as disk drives, and the lower 1.5 Mbit/s rate for low data rate devices such as joysticks. The USB 2.0 specification has 480 Mbit/s data transfer rate, which is also known as “High Speed”. The new USB 3.0 specification has up to 5 Gbit/s data transfer rate, known as “Super Speed”.
P18F2550/4550 supports low speed (1.5 Mb/s) and Full Speed (12 Mb/s). So the first thing you have to know is how to set desired clock for USB.
Clock setting
I’ll show you how to configure ‘Full Speed’ i.e. 12 Mb/s. When you use mcu for USB connectivity, it must have either a 6 MHz or 48 MHz clock for USB operation, depending on whether Low-Speed or Full-Speed mode is being used. The first thing you can do is, use a 48MHz crystal (for full speed). But there are two drawbacks:
- 48MHz isn’t available that much and it is costly.
- The higher the crystal, the greater will be the noise.
Microchip really does a great job to solve this problem. They include a phase locked loop (PLL) frequency multiplier, which allows a wide range of clock speeds from 4MHz to 48MHz. Noise cancelation is handled inside it. So we are going to use this feature to produce Full Speed for USB.
The block diagram of clock is shown below: (from datasheet, page 24).
P18F2550 have both external and internal oscillator supports. As we are discussing external oscillator that’s why I omitted the down part of the diagram (not shown). From the diagram you see that PLL module actually create 96MHz and after divide by two it is 48MHz. This PLL module must have 4MHz input. So if you use 4MHz crystal then you should set 1(one) as PLL prescaler (PLLDIV = 000). If you use 20MHz then prescaler should be 5 and so on.
That was the end of USB clock settings. Now what about mcu clock source. From the block diagram you can see that either you can use PLL’s output or you can directly use crystal’s output. And they both have some prescaler values.
In this tutorial I am going to use a 20MHz crystal. So for USB, PLL prescaler will be 5. MCU will be running at 20MHz (i.e. prescaler will be 1 [CPUDIV = 00] ).
P18F2550 have both external and internal oscillator supports. As we are discussing external oscillator that’s why I omitted the down part of the diagram (not shown). From the diagram you see that PLL module actually create 96MHz and after divide by two it is 48MHz. This PLL module must have 4MHz input. So if you use 4MHz crystal then you should set 1(one) as PLL prescaler (PLLDIV = 000). If you use 20MHz then prescaler should be 5 and so on.
That was the end of USB clock settings. Now what about mcu clock source. From the block diagram you can see that either you can use PLL’s output or you can directly use crystal’s output. And they both have some prescaler values.
In this tutorial I am going to use a 20MHz crystal. So for USB, PLL prescaler will be 5. MCU will be running at 20MHz (i.e. prescaler will be 1 [CPUDIV = 00] ).
Circuit Diagram
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