USB Hi-Speed to Digital Level UART Cables

USB solutions specialist Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) has added two more cables to its USB to digital level serial interface product offering. The new products, which make up the company’s C232HD USB 2.0 Hi-Speed to Digital Level UART cable series, each incorporate one of its FT232H Hi-Speed USB RS232 converter.

ICs, mounted on a compact circuit board contained within the USB connector at the end of the cable. Receive and transmit buffers with 1 kByte capacities allow efficient transfer of high levels of data. The signal levels are either +3.3 V (for the C232HD-DDHSP-0 version) or +5 V (for C232HD-EDHSP-0 version).

The integrated FT232H IC handles all the USB signalling and protocols, facilitating rapid implementation and lowering engineering overheads. Both the C232HD-DDHSP-0 and C232HD-EDHSP-0 have an optional power output capability with a maximum output current of 200 mA at their respective signal voltage level. The cables, which are 1.8m long, can cope with data transfer rates of up to 12 Mbaud.

Both of these cable products have an operational temperature range of -40 °C to +85 °C. They are housed in black cabling with a transparent connector at the end. Individual wires are terminated on to a single header socket. Typical applications for these product include Flash card readers/writers, bar code scanners, industrial control systems, medical diagnostic equipment, set top box interfaces, USB digital camera interfaces and USB wireless modems. An additional power output pin can be used to drive the target application. As the cables are powered by a USB host port, they can easily be configured into various interface options using freely available application software. FTDI also provides the required USB drivers free to download from its website.