PL2303 and Xbee on a breadboard
Despite being quite old, asynchronous serial interface is still popular these days. Xbees, Bluetooth and WiFi embedded adapters, standalone GPS modules are often equipped with asynchronous serial data port. At the same time, standard size Arduino comes with just one asynchronous port – and the same port is used to load compiled sketches and print debug messages. Using these functions while sharing serial port with peripherals is never trivial and often impossible. Recently announced revision 2.0 of USB Host Shield library allows communication with several USB devices simultaneously making it possible to talk to multiple peripherals via USB to serial converters. The converters are available from many places and cost around 15 dollars. However, any old cell phone data cable is essentially a USB to serial converter and can be used as such with not much difficulty. In this article, I will show how to modify data cable originally intended for Sony Ericsson T226 phone into general purpose USB-to-serial.
Continue reading Building PL2303 USB to Serial converter from old data cable