I think just about everyone will suggest you communicate using a USB  
to Serial adapter .  It is a great solution.
Async serial communication is supported by nearly every development  
language plus you find it on lots of devices.
Aysnc serial communication is not obsolete and will be viable for the  
next 20 years [ I think ] .
USB to serial adapters can be purchased for around $10.  Do you  
consider $10 expensive ?
Gus


> On Oct 4, 2009, at 6:38 PM, Nathan House wrote:
>
> I need to have two way communication between a PIC microcontroller  
> and a
> laptop computer. I only know of two ways to do this:
>
> 1) Over a serial (RS-232) connection.
> 2) Over a USB connection.
>
> I have successfully sent data back and forth between a dsPIC and my  
> laptop
> using the UART module, but it's an annoyance to have to use a serial- 
> to-USB
> adaptor and working with serial ports on windows is not fun. Also,  
> if other
> people ever decide to duplicate my project, they would have to buy an
> expensive adaptor as I've had to do.
>
> Everyone has USB ports on their computers, so this seems like a good  
> option.
> But I really don't know *anything* about USB. Is using the USB  
> module on a
> PIC difficult? Would it be hard to write a windows program to  
> recieve and
> send data?
>
> In your opinion, is it worth taking the time to learn about how USB  
> works
> and how to implement it in my project? It just seems like no one is  
> using
> serial anymore, are serial communications becoming obsolete, and is  
> it time
> to move on to USB?
>
> Thanks for your input.
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