I’m planning to buy one of the 315MHz RF link pairs. I’d like to wire the receiver straight to the serial port on my PC (or as straight as possible). Can anyone tell me if I need to use the RS232 shifter (PRT-00449) between the receiver and the port in order to keep from frying the receiver?
Probably. I don’t think you’ll damage anything if you just hook the data out line from the receiver to the RX line on your serial port, but many computer ports won’t work with the 5V signal the receiver puts out. So you may need the level shifter. But you won’t damage anything if you don’t connect any transmit lines from the computer to the receiver module. Just power the receiver from a clean 5V supply, or batteries, and connect the data line to the computer. That’s about it.