This is a highly-practical guide for Hobbyists, Engineers and Scientists wishing to build measurement and control systems to be used in conjunction with a local or even remote Personal Computer. The book covers both hardware and software aspects of designing typical embedded systems based on personal computers running the Windows operating system. It's use of modern techniques in detailed, numerous examples has been designed to show clearly how straightforward it can be to create the interfaces between digital and analogue electronics, programming and Web-design. With an emphasis on learning by doing, readers are encouraged by examples to program with ease; the book provides clear guidelines as to the appropriate programming techniques "on the fly". Complete and well-documented source code is provided for all projects.