I like the Maestros a lot, and I have quite a few lying around my lab and office now. Recently I have been doing a lot of work with Arduinos, and I am interested in exploring the PIC chips as well.
Has anyone gotten custom code to run on a Maestro board? Since you can upgrade the firmware over USB I assume that they must be USB programmable, and the 6 (or 12-24) available pins are more than enough for most applications. $20 or $30 seems like a bargain for getting into programming a microcontroller, and while I know there are other options out there that are sold as dev boards, nothing is cheaper than the one you already have!
Is there anything I need to know, or should I just get a copy of MPLAB X and try it out?