New here, sayin hi!

hello to all.
i'm new to this forum, have some electronic knowledge but wanting to update my little brain. Pic controllers interest me. i also do firework shows. and wanting to build a circuit that can connect to the computer thru USB and be real time would be good. any number of outputs, that could handle 1A @12vDC. thanks everyone.

Welcome. Have you looked at PIC developer boards so you don't have to implement your own uC from scratch? You probably need a USB interface chip though since USB is supposed to be a complicated interface to work with. There are also PIC chips that have USB capability I believe. For switching 1A, 12VDC, you could use relays or MOSFETs...doesn't really matter.

Thanks for the input. is there a company in the links here that would be good to order from? do you know about how many outputs i could get from the 16x pic? i think that's what it's called

Microchip (the maker of the PIC chips) or Mikroelectronika (3rd party that makes some developer boards) have some good developer boards. GO onto www.microchip.com and search under the tables for the PIC chips you want to see how many I/O they have (it depends on the specific chip).