Using HID to talk to USB devices

[Rob Fox 2013]

I've been asked to put together a debug type program that will find and talk to a piece of USB hardware (PIC micro based, designed by someone else). I have never done anything like this before and I have looked all over the place and have found various examples but all seem very lengthy and way above my current skill set. Is it easier than i think and where am i best looking to work out how to do this?

[Dy7SLyTq]

i think i saw a library on source forge