Microcontroller to PC Communication

[WhiteBoard]

Hi. Occasionally I'm in a situation in which it would be nice to be able to use a PC to communicate with a microcontroller (e.g. a PIC device) via a standard PC port (e.g. USB).

As a person who's more at home developing hardware than software, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the complexities associated with the USB standard and its implementaton to serve a custom application. I don't know how to write code that runs on a PC (outside of a VBA macro) and uses an API to communicate over USB.

I'd really appreciate some recommendations on simpler ways to have a PIC send data over wire to a PC for logging/display and how to send data or commands from the PC to the PIC. At this point I'd be thrilled just to learn how I could type in a number on a PC (say, in Hyperterminal), have the PIC receive it, add 1 to the number, and send the incremented number back to the PC for display.

Thanks very much for your help!

[Franklin97355]

You can use a USB to TTL serial cable or a USB to ICSP cable. Google should get you many options and instructions for this along a search for "communicating with a microcontroller"