The awesome embedded adventures logo goes here!
GO

EMBEDDED ADVENTURES: CONNECT THE WORLD AROUND YOU

USB2Serial Platform
USB2Serial Platform
Description

Our best selling platform! And now completely revised, fully surface mount and more microcontroller pins broken out.

This is a fully assembled, ready to roll USB to Serial (TTL/UART) module.

Straight out of the box you'll have yourself a fully functioning USB - TTL serial port, ideal for programming PICs with or communicating between your PC and other platforms.  It even does 5v or 3.3v depending on the switch position.

The great thing is that this isn't based on one of those boring fixed function USB serial chips like the CP2102 or FT232RL - they can only do one thing, and you can't change it.  This module is completely hackable.  It's based on the fantastic PIC18F14K50 chip.  Combined with the PicPack USB stack, you can change it however you want.  

Sure, if you plug it in you can do serial.  All the pins of the PIC not occupied by the crystal are broken out, so you could use them as additional inputs or outputs.  There's a couple of push button switches and three LEDs, all of which you can use for your own nefarious purposes.

So not only do you start out with a useful module, but you can learn how USB works and change the module to do anything and everything you want.

Out of the box, the module comes with Boostbloader loaded (so you can update the firmware over a serial connection - in fact, you can use another USB2Serial module to update it, if that's not too recursive for you), the red LED lights to indicate boostbloader running, yellow LED flashes for transmit and green LED for receive.

Of course, you could change it to be a mouse (using the two buttons) or a keyboard or a joystick...or just about anything!

Best of all, we've had so many requests for these modules that we've had a whole stack manufactured to keep the price down.

So hands down this is the best priced USB to Serial module on the planet. Buy two! Buy two and a couple of spares! They're never going to go to waste.

Specification
Platform: PLT-1003v4
Description:  USB2Serial and USB development platform
Hackability: 100% (full datasheet, schematics, source code provided; see the ea_plt1003_usb2serial project in the latest PicPack library)
Microcontroller: PIC18F14K50
Datasheet: PLT-1003
Driver: USB2Serial.inf (right click, Save As)
Construction instructions: None needed, aside from male or female headers as you desire