"John" wrote in message ...

Many thnaks for the heads-up on the PICs. I've always tried to avoid USB
interfaces for control applications, but I have a project on the horizon
where I will almost certainly go down that route - simply because laptops
no longer have RS-232 ports..

If this is a one-off project, you might even consider that particular board,
depending on your requirements. The USB is used as a peripheral to the 28
pin part, so that from the bigger part you can simply do a printf() to
communicate to your PC over serial. It relies on a Microcoft provided
serial emulation driver. If your requirements are more demaiding, then you
will need to really hit the books. Doing the USB software interface isn't
real trivial.

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