RS-232 USB Madness


If you’ve been amused by the lengths people go through to speak to a serial device these days. [timmeh] just took the cake. He build his own frikkin’ tiny RS-232 to USB interface with the diminutive SIL CP2101. The package on it is QFN-28 (If PLCC is Darth Vader, QFN-28 is his mean little brother.) That said, if you prefer to work with stuff that talks TTL or RS-232, this could be a handy add-on to pop a USB port on your project. (Oh, look, they have samples…) Sure, we’ve beaten the serial connections to death, but they’re so handy we just can’t resist. It may be a decent way to add a serial port to your laptop. (Picture this: dell’s bluetooth cards are usb devices – you could add one of these without even voiding your warranty.)

15 thoughts on “RS-232 USB Madness

  1. I’ve personally used the heat gun method to re-reflow boards which had become unstable, and htese were not low-pin-count devices either (256-ball MAPBGA, 90-ball VBGA and 64-pin EasyBGA parts) — I found the trick was to use a non-contact thermometer and aim it at the part you wanted to reflow, warm up the entire board and then center in on the part. I brought the surface temp up to about 230-250 degrees C and it seems to work very well. None of the 0603 parts or larger tantalum or electrolytic caps on the other side fell off, either, which was a bonus. :-)

  2. Very nice IC – I just requested samples.
    Earlier I was using FT232BM but it is much more intergrated circuit (CP2101). In FT232BM projects it was need to use external oscillator and here if you request professional pcb boards you could put everything on USB plug :)

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