I've been working on a piece of hardware as part of my degree requirements. It involves bidirectoinal dataflow from a number of sources. The poor old RS-232 just can't handle it. I either need to:

a. scrap it all and start over, with graduation in May
b. switch it over to something faster.

For obvious reasons, I'm likeing "b" better. USB becuase the peripherals just got a lot easier, becuase most of the stuff I need the serial port for there is also a USB version of. The key requirements are reading from a digital camera, sending that to a compact flash piece for archive, while also having the change in images control a set of stepper motors and some human-detectable signalers. It's an optical tracking system.

My question is, has anyone ever built a USB device? I'm looking for a microcontroller, preferably one capable of using microC OS, embedded Linux or VHDL, which has integrated USB control capabilities. Baring that, a USB controller that will play nicely with an HC12. Anyone?

HELP!!!!!!
*popping flares and smoke*
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*waving a blaze orange signal flag the size of Montana*