FTDI Breakout PCB

AS most PC and notebooks now a day’s don't have a serial port, I had to find a way to simulate one using USB. I decided to design an breakout board for the FT232RL and FT245RL from FTDI. These are great, easy to use, IC's which are able to simulate UART and FIFO. This breakout board gives the capability to give any project USB capabilities at a relative low cost as you can swap the board between projects (and breadboard).

The design uses an (smt) jumper (SJ1) to allow for easy changing between bus powered and self powered mode. When placed between pin 2 and 3, the board is in self powered mode. When placed between 1, 2 and 3, the board is in bus powered mode .

The schematic is the same for both FT232RL and FT245RL. Only the output pins differ between te IC's. The FT232RL gives you UART (TXD, RXD, _RTS, _CTS, _DTR, _DSR, _DCD, _RI) and the FT245RL gives you FIFO (D0, D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, _RXF, _TXE, _RD, _WR, _PWREN)

R1 4k7 *
R2 10k *
C1 100nF
C2 100nF
C3 100nF
C4 100nF
C5 10uF
IC1 FT232RL or FT245RL
L1 ferrite bead (may be omitted)

* only for bus powered mode

And here is the finished result. The board is very small, only 30x20mm. This way it leaves enough clear space on a bread board to connect it to an MCU .

This PCB is also used as the first reflow oven test. Click here for more details: Reflow toaster.

As i sold about 100 of these break out board to fellow electronics enthusiasts, I wrote a little manual for this board. The manual features a soldering manual and some examples on how to connect the board to your PC and MCU. It also includes some additional photo's.
The manual can be downloaded here: FTDI_manual.pdf (553 kB)

Also the Eagle schematic and Eagle board files are available:
FTDI_PCB.rar (97.1 kB). For FTDI_232RL.brd the top silkscreen is on layer 37. The bottom silkscreen is on layer 38 and layer 200. For FTDI_245RL.brd the top silkscreen is on layer 25 and layer 37 and the bottom silkscreen is on layer 26 and layer 38 .