USB confused (running out of hair)

[dhouston]

While there are some PICs that have a USB stack, You'll lose any remaining hair trying to figure out how to implement pure USB on both ends of the connection.

Save your hair and do it the easy way. FTDI, Silicon Labs and Prolific (others??) make USB-serial chips that send receive via USB and convert it to serial (a la RS232) on the embedded end. All provide free drivers for Windows, Linux and OSX that appear as Virtual Serial Ports on the PC end so all you have to do is write code (on both ends) to handle serial comms.

• http://www.ftdichip.com/
• http://www.silabs.com/Pages/default.aspx
• http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/Products.asp?ID=59

If you are not designing your own board, there are inexpensive, external adapters that do the same thing.

• http://www.byterunner.com/byterunner...ct_match=exact

As for VB/HID

If you really insist on pure USB, there have been threads here on that. Jan Axelson's web site is also quite helpful. There are methods for interfacing under Windows but you are pretty much on your own for Linux and OSX.

• http://lvr.com/

• http://ssimplyhair.com/toupee.aspx

As for PC programming, look at PureBasic. It's cross platform and both far more powerrful and far less complicated than any you mentioned. However, it does not do pure USB.

• http://www.purebasic.com/