FT232RL USB-to-Serial Board for Arduino/LilyPad, 5V

Description

FT232RL USB-to-Serial Board for Arduino/LilyPad, 5V
Important Note on Shipping Delays via United States Postal Service: Currently we see significant delays in shipments via USPS, up to 3 weeks (!) to deliver within the USA. If you need your item fast, we suggest you select Fedex shipping upon checkout, instead of the standard USPS shipping.
DEV-09716
This new revision of the FT232RL USB-to-Serial Board for Arduino/LilyPad now has a SMD 6-pin header on the bottom, which makes it smaller and more compact. Functionality has remained the same.
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. Arduino Pro and LilyPad boards use this type of 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 that the board is working.
If you'll be doing a lot of programming and would find it a nuisance having to plug in and unplug this adapter to gain access to your board's serial lines each time, consider the new
FTDI SmartBasic
board which has a multiplexer that allows pass-through of the serial lines.