Datasheet

Serial UART

Out of the box the FT232H is configured to act just like an FTDI friend USB to serial UART converter (http://adafru.it/dQa). This is

great for talking to a serial device like an Arduino from your computer. It's safe to use with both 3.3 volt and 5 volt signals. This

means the FT232H breakout can used to safely talk to an Arduino's 5 volt serial ports, and a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black's

3.3 volt serial ports!

When used as a serial UART the FT232H breakout pins have the following serial functions:

D0 - TX or transmit pin. This pin is the serial data output by the FT232H chip and should be connected to the RX or receive

pin of a serial device.

D1 - RX or receive pin. This pin is the serial data input for the FT232H chip and should be connected to the TX or transmist

pin of a serial device.

D2 - RTS or ready to send pin. This is an optional pin for flow control of serial connections.

D3 - CTS or clear to send pin. Like RTS, this is an optional pin for flow control.

D4 - DTR or data terminal ready pin. Another optional pin for flow control in RS-232 serial connections.

D5 - DSR or data set ready pin. Like DTR, this is another optional pin for flow control in RS-232 serial connections.

D6 - DCD or data carrier detect pin. This is an optional pin that is sometimes used in RS-232 serial communication.

The most important and commonly used serial pins are D0 and D1 for the TX and RX pins. The other pins are only necessary if

you're using a device with flow control or specific RS-232 serial needs.

USB Serial Drivers

Before you can use the FT232H as a serial UART you need to make sure the proper serial port drivers are installed. Luckily most

operating systems include FTDI's serial UART driver so there typically isn't any installation necessary.

Specifically Mac OSX Mavericks or greater have the FTDI serial driver included automatically. Linux kernel versions since ~2.6

also have the FTDI serial driver included, so modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu 12.04 or 14.04 should work without any driver

installation. Windows can usually search online to find the driver automatically, however if that fails see below for manual driver

installation instructions.

If for some reason your operating system doesn't have FTDI serial drivers installed, you can download and install official drivers

from FTDI's site (http://adafru.it/aJv). There are drivers available for Windows 7 & 8, Mac OSX, and Linux.

Windows Serial Driver Installation

Below I'll briefly walk through installation of the FTDI serial driver for Windows since it is a common platform to install the driver.

First start with your Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 machine booted and the FT232H board disconnected from the PC.

Download the FTDI serial driver (sometimes called VCP or virtual COM port) here (http://adafru.it/aJv), make sure to pick the

Windows setup executable version of the driver.

Next open explorer and navigate to the folder where the driver executable was downloaded. Right click on the file and select Run

as administrator as shown below to start the installation. It's important to run as administartor or else the driver installation will

fail to copy files to Window's system directories.