> What's the easiest way to write a PC application, which gives acces
> the PC's interfaces?

This used to be RS-232.  That is still easy to get working, but nowadays you
can't count on the user's PC having serial ports.  Pretty much no recent
laptops have serial ports.

> I think to be a bit more future proof, using USB instead of the serial
> interface (rs232) would be a good idea, but as a fall-back-solution,
> the serial interface would be possible too.
>
> how can i access these interfaces in a simple way with today's
> technology?

USB is more code, but I've already put all that together,
http://www.embedinc.com/pic/usb.htm.  This includes the 18F firmware to
drive the USB peripheral, a Windows driver, and example host software.
Endpoints 1 are set up as a bidirection stream of bytes with simple PUT and
GET interfaces at each end.  If you keep your protocol to only requiring a
bidirectional stream of bytes, then the higher levels should work with TCP,
RS-232, USB, and things likely to come along in the future.

For now the USB code I referred to above uses the USBProg hardware as the
example platform.  In September the ReadyBoard-02
(http://www.embedinc.com/products/ready02) should be available.  This should
make one-off USB projects really easy on both the hardware and software
sides.


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