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FTDI Basic Breakout - 5V
sku: DEV-09115
Description: This is a basic breakout board for the FTDI FT232RL USB to serial IC. The pinout of this board matches the FTDI cable to work with official Arduino and cloned 5V Arduino boards. It can also be used for general serial applications. The major difference with this board is that it brings out the DTR pin as opposed to the RTS pin of the FTDI cable. The DTR pin allows an Arduino target to auto-reset when a new Sketch is downloaded. This is a really nice feature to have and allows a sketch to be downloaded without having to hit the reset button. This board will auto reset any Arduino board that has the reset pin brought out to a 6-pin connector.The pins labeled BLK and GRN correspond to the colored wires on the FTDI cable. The black wire on the FTDI cable is GND, green is CTS. Use these BLK and GRN pins to align the FTDI basic board with your Arduino target.
This board has TX and RX LEDs that make it a bit better to use over the FTDI cable. You can actually see serial traffic on the LEDs to verify if the board is working.
This board was designed to decrease the cost of Arduino development and increase ease of use (the auto-reset feature rocks!). Our Arduino Pro boards and LilyPads use this type of connector.
One of the nice features of this board is a jumper on the back of the board that allows the board to be configured to either 3.3V or 5V (both power output and IO level). This board ship default to 5V, but you can cut the default trace and add a solder jumper if you need to switch to 3.3V.
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Spark Fun sells a few too
https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8769
https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=597
What makes this one so special?
I've got my own breakout board coming together, and it would be convenient for me to skip the ferrite bead too because I don't have any handy. I'm interested to hear about the practical impact of this decision.
Even if the cord doesn't have one, and there isn't one on the board, doesn't a small capacitor between ground and supply do the same thing?
I'm completely aware of modifying the 3v version to work with my arduino pro (5v), but I don't want to.
Would you like a version of this board with male headers? I thought this might be more useful when programming our Arduino Pro minis. Any thoughts? I know you can just shove a 6-pin male breakaway header in there and your done, but I always try and cut any unnecessary links in the chain out, if ya can.
Would you mind if we went to an SMD part for the header? How much abuse are these boards getting? I have been pretty impressed with the strength of some of our SMD headers, but i know they will always be arguably less durable that a thru-hole part.
thanks,
-Pete
A male connector by itself doesn't really help since the problem is the boards are loose.
A clip with something like sideways pogo pins that would seat into the holes (and maybe fit into the existing female connector) would be a much bigger help.
Actually individual clips or one that could be rewired would help even more, then I could use them on something like the Venus GPS breakout.
Mine do get some abuse, but I don't think a surface mount connector would be a problem.
Keep in mind that the power supply for your µC needs to be 5v because the transmit and receive pins (tx and rx) of the FTDI breakout are outputting 5v logic levels.