There is a program available at
members.cox.net/seanwitte that works sort of like a bi-directional dashboard. You can send 8 bytes, 6 16-bit signed integers, and 16 binary values back to the PC. The PC sends 8 bytes and 8 digital values to the RC. It will capture, plot, and save up to 10 of the IO values at once. This will not work if you have any printfs in your code.
Install the EDUController application (windows only). Grab pc_interface.h and pc_interface.c from the MPLAB project on the web site above and add them to your project. Heres how you would use it:
1) Add #include "pc_interface.h" to the top of user_routines.c
2) Call function "InitializePCInterface()" at the end of User_Initialization().
3) Call function "SendReceivePCData()" from Process_Data_From_Master_uP, right before the call to Putdata().
Now, whenever you set the values of the aliases in pc_interface.h those values will be sent to the EDUController application. To verify, try adding the line "sensor1 = 116;" to Default_Routine(). Make sure the RC is running and start the EDUController program. Select the correct COM port, and click Open. You should see the value for Analog Input 1 change to 116. The rest of the controls are pretty self explanatory. The connection is closed automatically when you stop a capture.