Does anyone have or know of a hookup guide for the [MAX3232? I’m surprised one isn’t included with the product description. I haven’t purchased one of these yet so I can’t experiment on my own.
It looks fairly straight-forward but I wanted to confirm how to hookup the voltage and GND pins. Presumably they both connect to the microcontroller or other TTL device. Do either need to connect to the RS232 device? I’m wondering about the GND pin in particular.
In my project I’m trying to read data from a legacy device (a DS50 depth gauge on my boat) with an Arduino. There are no communication specs available for the DS50 but appears to be transmitting via a serial interface at 1200,8,N,1. I can read data very well by hooking it to my Macbook with an FTDI adapter. But I can’t read it with the Arduino, hooking up to the standard serial port. Connecting through a [level converter hasn’t helped, which makes me wonder if the device is sending RS232 instead of TTL. The datasheet for the FTDI chip suggests it can be used in RS232 applications, which makes me think it might be doing the conversion all by itself (any thoughts here?) which would explain why the Macbook can read the DS50 but the Arduino can’t at this point.
The DS50 has its own 5-pin interface not a DB-9.](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12009)](SparkFun Transceiver Breakout - MAX3232 - BOB-11189 - SparkFun Electronics)
