FT2232 Breakout

Archive New Product Ideas
1

Hi, everyone.

I want to propose a [FT2232 Dual UART/FIFO/SPI/… breakout board as a new Sparkfun product.

In know that a suggestion for the bare IC has already been posted [in 2008 but I want to highlight that the FTDI FT2232D Dual USB UART/FIFO IC looks like a very handy device in desperate need for more breakout boards (there’s one from FTDI).

The 2232 consists of two halves which each can operate in the following modes:

  • UART mode (like FT232)

  • FIFO mode (like FT245)

  • JTAG or SPI + GPIO pins

Additionally there’s a multiplexed A/D bus-mode using both halves that could be used

to drive multi-register parallel-interface ICs.

Possible uses for this IC, or the corresponding breakout board, include:

  • (obviously) connecting two uarts

  • fast SPI or FIFO connection to a otherwise USB-unfriendly chip (connect your favourite ADC, RFID controller, stepper motor IC, … to USB)

  • use one half to speak to your application, debug with JTAG in parallel, with the 2nd half

  • attach multi-register parallel-bus chips (e.g. more complicated controllers) directly to the USB bus.

I’d love to hear your comments about this suggestion.](http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12707)](http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/FT2232C.htm)

2

FTDI already do DIP modules for most of their parts

3

Hi vogelchr,

I know this is not exactly a breakout board, but the Signalyzer H2 (FT2232H based) and Signalyzer H4 (FT4232H based) are generic modules providing access to all FT2(4)232H signals. Additional 6 GPIO pins (per side) can be used as ADC, PWM or plain GPIO signals.

Signalyzer LIB (currently in alpha release) provides very simple API to all of the FT2232 functionality with support for generic SPI, I2C and soon JTAG reads/writes. It is available as prebuilt DLL/.so/.a for Windows and Linux with Mac OS X support soon to follow. C++, .NET, Python, Tck and Labview wrappers are also in works and will be released in near future.

Please have a look at http://www.signalyzer.com

Signalyzer – USB JTAG, I2C and SPI Embedded Systems Development and Manufacturing Tools for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X

http://www.signalyzer.com

4

Hi there,

I’d also like to point out that there is already an FT2232H mini module sold by both digikey and ftdi for about $35 that breaks out all the pins.

I use a few of them in my projects where I need high speed (~20 MB/sec) data transfer.

Having said that the chips seem to have weird latency spikes that have forced me to use a huge (8MB buffer).