Using a USB Flash drive with an embedded host

USB Flash drives are a popular, simple and inexpensive method of moving data from one PC to another. Their use in the embedded market has been limited, however, due to the requirement that a system must have USB host capability to communicate with a Flash drive. In the past, this usually meant that the system needed to be a PC. However, the introduction of Microchip’s PIC® microcontrollers with USB embedded host capability means that embedded systems can now take advantage of this popular portable media. With the ability to store data to a USB Flash drive, a PIC microcontroller-based application now has virtually unlimited data storage.