Virtual USB Serial Port

What’s the purpose behind the virtual USB port on the G80 Dev board schematic? It has a hardware DB9 serial port, USB host, and USB debug port already. I looked up the part # for the virtual serial port and those chips aren’t cheap. But I can’t figure out what the “need” was that drove the addition of it?

That’s FT233R chip isn’t cheap, even in larger quantities that’s a $3+ part, was it to get a small footprint USB header for a Serial line or for some other purpose?

I don’t have a G80 dev board and don’t understand the purpose behind that port is all. Was referencing that schematic during a “sanity check” of my first G80 based circuit design and noticed it. Was like. “Hmm. What’s with that?”

I tried searching the forums but when you search for either USB or Serial finding an answer is like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. :slight_smile:

it’s just to give another serial port that’s immediately connectable, potentially to devices that a hardware developer may have… It means you can run this as an output channel for your data connected to your PC, for example communicating to an app, while at the same time having a debug session over the regular USB port. So from the G80 perspective, you’ve got something hooked to PA9/PA10, that’s it. If you wanted it to be a pair of header pins, that would work, and connect them to a CP2102 or some other external USB-TTL serial port.

1 Like

We find it very helpful. We use it to connect our G80 devices to a PC serial console (Hyperterminal and other similar software) without the need for a USB-RS232 converter cable. The serial console gives our customers an easy way to configure operational parameters.

2 Likes

That makes sense! Thanks guys.

1 Like