I don't have a hackaday account. But, I just wanted to clear up some confusion a poster over there seems to have, just in case you got some ideas about what this video was going to show you based on what you read there. Or you found this video yourself and also came to the same conclusions they did. Or were about to to come to these conclusions.

They seem to have gotten the point of this thing backwards. So, it's strangely easier to clarify things in reverse order. Starting from the end:

"He runs through a few other potentially useful scenarios, but really, the best use of something like this is to educate yourself on the lowest levels of USB connection negotiation".
The whole point and really only point of the board shown is to demonstrate the first (low level) thing a USB device does to signal for attachment, which in turn causes it to list in the mentioned utilities, in the way shown. That is, the minimum thing that a USB device has to do right to cause that to happen, namely USB device pull-ups. The point is to educate yourself on that topic and hopefully have that inform your debugging of USB device problems. Or you can just find it mildly interesting. The board you see in the video was put together to help demonstrate the device pull-ups and nothing more. That "best use" was the only intended use for it.

"[TM] points out, you could use this circuit to test that the physical port on the host at least minimally works."
You could use it that way.  But that's not what I'm explaining at all. What I'm showing is what you can expect to see on your computer (in both Windows and Linux), if something successfully creates these signals alone. These signals are the minimum needed to list in same way in both Device Manager and dmesg. That's what I'm showing in the video.

"as this extremely minimal but functional USB device illustrates."
Well, the board is somewhat minimal. But, as many people pointed that you don't really need an actual linear regulator IC on it (more on that below).  However,  this is definitely not anything I call a "functional USB device." It quite literally reports with failures to read the device descriptor and has nothing on it capable of sending USB messages, which are both things mentioned in the video.  What it is is a demonstration of the "minimum needed for a USB device to list in Device Manager", hence the video title.

So far as I can tell, the author thought the material at the end of the video was intended to describe ways to use the board shown, as though it were made to be a tool you could build and not what it is, a demonstration board. What's being talked about at the end of the video are ways you can use "this understanding"... understanding of USB pull-up resistors. These are the "something useful" I mentioned at the beginning of the video, the "something useful to use in your thinking when troubleshooting USB problems."  Ways to use the under "understanding". Not ways to use the board.

I hope I'm not coming off as mean in the above. I'm glad someone was thoughtful enough to mention it on a site about electronics. It's crazy to me than anyone is watching this. I thought like maybe 5 people would watch it, maybe 50. But so long as people are watching it, I do want to make really clear about what is being said in the video and what is not. It is just demonstration and description of a basic thing that USB devices do and how you might use the knowledge of that  which is demonstrated to help you in troubleshooting.

Regarding regulators and dividers:

Mostly I used a regulator to be more or less in analogy with what you actually find in USB devices. They're typically already 3.3V devices powered by a regulator. Or they're 5V devices that have an internal 3.3V regulator specifically for this purpose. And it's probably the least distracting thing to put there when you're explaining something not-that on the board. I'd also briefly considered using what the Digispark uses, which is essentially a zener regulator and because it features later in the video. And because I also happened to know where some of my zener diodes were. But, I also just had a regulator. And yeah, you could also probably just make a divider from VUSB to GND. I didn't try it. I expect it works. But also I simply had a regulator and cap at hand.

Could you use a divider? Yeah probably. If you wanted to rely on the 15k internal pulldown you won't wind up with 1.5K on the top. You'll need something more like 8K, I think. Which is not what is called for.  Would it work? Probably, I think. If it worked for me would it work for you? I don't know. Maybe.

If you put 1.5K on the top with only 15K on the bottom you'll wind up above the 3.3V nominal signal range. Is that a problem? Maybe not. If it wasn't a problem (perhaps damaging something) for me would in not be a problem for you? I don't know.

So, you'd need a resistor in parallel with the 15K internal one, which is quite large compared to what you'd need externally. So you can more or less ignore the 15K and you don't necessarily need to run the parallel resistor calculation and just think of it as simple two resistor network. If you put a 3K resistor on the bottom of the divider that should be about right. With 1.5K on the top it divides 5V to about 3.3V. Would that work? Probably. However, the USB host is going to act on that divider when it tries to set a device address and ask for a device descriptor. Is that a problem? I don't know. If it worked for me, would.... Or you could just use a regulator. And then it will work and immediately be recognized as something that will work if you were trying to explain it someone else, say in a video for example. =)

If you want to play with voltage dividers or the Digispark/V-USB/bitbanged style zener setup, go for it. If you have TL431 kicking around, I'm sure you could get that to work. Or if you have a simple 3.3V fixed output linear regulator kicking around, maybe just use that. If you're not worried about the repeatability of your setup you have a lot more freedom. Try stuff way out of spec. I did and found at least on hubs that I tried it on it worked fine to get similar results. But, you can get a 3.3V regulator like for under 1USD, in quantity one, at least if you're in the US  ordering anything from a US parts distributor.

Original Message:
I'm really surprised to find this sort of support. Especially on a video like this. Had a little more to say about it in a community post. But mostly I just want to say thanks for letting me know you're getting anything out of watching this. It's just good to see.

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxvMno3tHF9bHJ4N3BiNBrIeZPUuBtQZWF

Plot twist: there was a tiny microcontroller hidden inside the electrolytic capacitor package.

The internet needs more videos like these that help to demystify what have become everyday technologies an help the folks trying to utilize it to develop some basic debugging \ troubleshooting skills.

This video is incredibly helpful to quickly narrow down on some USB problems, thanks for condensing all this information down!

Next, grab the D+ and D- switches and manipulate them so they are on or off for roughly 570 ns with the following pattern...

Got this video recommended to me in my feed. I wasn't looking for this, nor do I have a particular use case for it at the moment. But watching these well explained videos of small creators always reminds of YouTube in it's early days where you got recommended all sorts of random videos because the algorithm wasn't that specific.

Keep up the good work!

Exist (optional)

Great video!
One small thing I caught: at 4:20 you say that SuperSpeed also pull up D+ to initiate the connection, but this is not strictly necessary. A SuperSpeed connection solely uses the SuperSpeed wires, so it'll even work with D+/D- completely disconnected. This allows for fun stuff like attaching a SuperSpeed-only and a different Low/Full/High-Speed device to the same USB port!

Someone in China be like: Hmmm maybe I can put all of this into a small package and slap on a 128 TB USB 3.0 sticker on it and sell it for 10 dollars on Amazon.

Years ago I could debug RS232 connections and tell you anything you wanted to know about it.  Today USB is a mystery - I plug it in and (usually) it works.  Very interesting to learn about the most basic aspect of how USB works.  Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Good stuff all the way through. I'm really impressed with the illustration quality and thought that went into this video, I know that's a lot of work!

11:31 instead of being pulled to 3.3 volts, it's pulled to 5V across a 1500Ω resistor. The whole 5V to 3.3V conversion is based on resistors and zener diodes. The necessary code for USB is controlled by bit bang software.

USB C specs also support the “Audio Accessory Mode” so you can make a mic input and speaker output without even using adc or dac via USB

Comprehensive, detailed, simple and informative. Thank you for taking time to explain this. It will undoubtedly help in troubleshooting USB related issues for me.

In my dreams you now start a video series, where you build any simple usb device on a breadboard level. It is not everyday when you love YT algorithm for showing a top notch of the top notch-quality video. I had to watch this 3 times to make sure I learnt every piece of details given in this video.

The outcome was to find just one reason more to hate Windows, lol.

These type of videos are the reason why youtube exists.

This is an insanely well made video showcasing a clever thing. Kudos to you! <3

This is very neat, it’s cool to see a video like this become so popular despite a low number of subscribers

TM -- I have to commend you on a meticulously conscientious lesson in basic USB.  A great job on focusing on the essentials that implement the basic functionality. And lovely attention to details that help everyone keep up, like having all the connections on the Veroboard on one side, and pointing out the number code on the resistors. Well done!

If the device is not working and is mentioned as a low speed device in dmesg (instead of full speed), you might have accidentally swapped the data lines in your design.