cost effective micro controller with USB support

[at89atbits]

Hi,
my circuit requires a micro controller to basically enable and disable a few ICs and finally send the digital data output - from the output of the rest of the circuit - to my laptop via USB interface.
No processing of the data is to be done inside the controller.
The only requirements are fastest processing time possible and USB compliant interface.
Which micro controller is the best for this application?
I had a look at PIC18F series
But any other micro controller better suited for this purpose from an different manufacturer would also do..

 

[Gryd3]

What are you comfortable / familiar with?
Suggesting a different type of micro that you have little / no experience on may hinder the progress of your project.
There are project like V-USB for Atmel's line of microcontroller, and there are lots of resources for getting PICs to enumerate as USB devices
http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.html

 

[Harald Kapp]

If you do not feel comfortable programming a full-blown USB controller, you can take the easy route and use a USB-to-serial converter IC (e.g. from FTDI or others). The come with drivers for the PC where the create a so called virtual COM port. On the PC's side they connect to USB, on the µC's side they are tied to a UART interface. You can send simple ASCII data from the PC to the µC and vice versa without having to deal with the intricacies of USB.

 

[Gryd3]

If you do not feel comfortable programming a full-blown USB controller, you can take the easy route and use a USB-to-serial converter IC (e.g. from FTDI or others). The come with drivers for the PC where the create a so called virtual COM port. On the PC's side they connect to USB, on the µC's side they are tied to a UART interface. You can send simple ASCII data from the PC to the µC and vice versa without having to deal with the intricacies of USB.

Good call! I forgot about those things!
... I'm going to go buy one actually ... I've been playing with the idea of programming an Attiny to communicate via USB..