The ECIO40 is a modern 18F4455 PIC microcontroller mounted on a miniature PCB and sporting a ready to use USB bootloader. The latter enables you to program the ECIO40 without having to buy an expensive programmer. The only things you need are a USB port on your PC and a small (free) program.In the E-Blocks article published in the March 2009 issue of Elektor, you could read how to measure an analogue and a digital signal using the ECIO40 and make these visible on your PC using the USB interface and a suitable driver.