I used one of the USB pics recently with the microchip stack, and it was 
remarkably easy.   Just hook to the PC, and load the stack and you end 
up with an interface which looks like a rs-232 interface between the PC 
and the PIC.   Of course a few steps have been left out, but generally 
it isn't much more difficult than dealing with all of the fun of doing 
serial between a PIC and a PC, especially once you have to add a USB To 
serial adapter.

-forrest

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.
>   

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist