pic micro controller
has anyone operated the power on and record using a PIC microcontroller throught the USB

No, but I have connected a PIC microcontroller to the buttons for Power On/Off and shutter, etc. If you connect a PIC to the USB connection it is a lot more work to communicate all of the USB commands and it might be too fast a data rate for some PIC's too. You used the word "record" are you talking about the video camcorder instead of the PV2 snapshot camera? This is the PV2 forum

sorry about the wrong forum I was talking about the camcorders I have them hard wired now just wondering about doing it with data thanks

findingnemo, I'd like to hear more about your using a PIC to control the power on/off and shutter. I'm planning to do the same thing with a 16F84 connected to a servo channel on an RC radio. I can detect the servo pulse width, but I haven't looked into where/how to connect to the camera, and how to deal with the auto shut off. Also, are you able to disable the camera flash? Thanks

snuckleton, Here is my website where I built an infrared motion controlled PV2 camera http://members.hotdial.net/ultrasonic@hotdial.net/ It shows where the wires connect to the On/off button and battery ground, but it is hard to see the shutter connection and power sensor up top. I was concerned about the Automatic shutoff interfering with the microcontroller's logic of what was camera power on and what was camera power off (since the on/off button is a momentary switch it doesn't know the difference), so I scoped around with a meter for the power lead to the flash charging circuit and fed that as an input logic to the PIC. Then the PIC knows when the camera is on or off and can decide whether or not to push the on/off button. I wrote the PIC code in assembly language if you are interested in seeing it I can send it to you. By the way are you going to put your camera on an RC vehicle? I am thinking about trying that.

findingnemo I responded to the email on your website, so we can exchange info via email. And yes, I am planning to put the PV2 on an Easystar RC airplane. Thanks

PIC, eh? I don't believe it is possible (without SEVERE hacking) to make a PIC act as a USB host. There are, however, PICs out there (18F4550, etc) which have a USB peripheral for connecting to a host. You can program it to act as a fake usb keyboard/mouse or a serial port, or anything you would be willing to write drivers for. Speaking of PICs, has anyone tried to make a pic-based serial-to-spi bridge to try to talk to that M510 on a few of the unknown pins?