The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a simple and common interface for connecting peripheral devices to a personal computer or other host. To harness its flexibility and power with minimal effort, Microchip provides the USB Generic Function firmware. The generic driver provides a very simple interface for reading and writing data exchanged with the USB host. Sample code is provided that is easily customized for the designer’s application.

If the generic driver does not provide all of the functionality required by a particular application (see “USB Generic Function API”), Microchip provides sample implementations of other frequently-requested USB device classes. These sample implementations are built upon the Microchip PIC32 USB peripheral firmware stack. If no sample is available that suits the desired application, the designer can develop his or her own function driver using the Microchip USB stack (refer to Microchip Application Note AN1176, “USB Device Stack for PIC32 Programmer’s Guide”).