How to connect USB to serial/UART?

[benn]

I want know USB to Serial Cable PIN Discrptions

Question from indiegogo

Interfaces:

[Sugar]

First, you should configure your serial parameters:

    Speed:   57600
    Parity:   None
    Data:     8
    Stopbits: 1

And, you can connect serial or UART correctly, as follows:

[leo]

This topic is now pinned globally. It will appear at the top of its category and all topic lists until it is unpinned by staff for everyone, or by individual users for themselves.

[RyanE]

The cable I received looks like this (no connector on green). Should I remove the black connector from the red wire and attach it to the green one?

[leo]

@RyanE Amm, that's too bad. Your fix is correct. The red connector is not useful.

[RyanE]

@leo Thanks for the reply. Lucklily I have one of these cables
http://hakshop.myshopify.com/collections/accessory/products/serial-ttl-cable#

That is the same thing, right?

[leo]

Yeah, they are the same thing.

[RyanE]

In case anyone else gets stuck like I did.. read this page[1] for help. Everything was connected and powered on, but I got nothing in minicom.
[edit]
I had the cables attached incorrectly.

[1] https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/hardware/port.serial

[RyanE]

More help here.. I could not get minicom to accept input. This means I couldn't select option "2" on bootup in order to flash the .bin. What worked for me was using screen.

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 57600

connect your USB TTY cable, run that command and power on the WiTi and you should be good to go.

[risk_]

So for this particular adapter, from outside of the board towards the inside of the board, it should be ground, green wire, white wire -- reversed TX/RX compared to what's on the photo?

[RyanE]

@risk_ Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse. I believe the picture in OP is accurate. I was using a different brand cable because the one sent to me was broken.

[risk_]

My USB to serial seemed broken as well, I ended up using some jumper wire to connect the raspberry pi uart pins to the 4 pin header on the WiTi and that worked out fine.

The only thing to be careful with when using another Linux device's serial port is that sometimes the kernel on that other device might be using that serial as a console, sometimes login might be running on it as well.
It's a good idea to disable those considering what you'd have on the WiTi is a bootloader allowing you to do ask sorts of crazy things.

[futtis]

I'm having problem connecting from MacBook Air.
Can't find the tty...

Any tips?

Now I found the solution. Dowloaded new drivers for PL2303 (1.6)
Live and well

[Beo6]

Is there any windows driver for it?

My windows does only show "Unknown USB-Device (Error requesting a device description)"

I am using Windows 10 btw.

[stas2z]

http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=225&pcid=41

[leo]

This is the driver for Windows8 which is not officially supported by the manufacture.I collected it from somewhere i forgot, maybe still useful to someone.

Profilic_Win8_x64_x86.zip (87.1 KB)

[richbhanover]

I have a question about using http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/serial-ttl-cable with WiTi. (I am an electrical engineer, but have never horsed around with USB-Serial connectors.)

I have done/seen the following:

• Connected Gnd, Tx, Rx between the pins of the USB-Serial connector and the WiTi in the obvious way. (Gnd -> Gnd, Rx -> Rx, Tx -> Tx)
• Installed the MacOSX driver for the adapter. (Silicon Labs 210x - http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBtoUARTBridgeVCPDrivers.aspx)
• ls /dev/cu* shows the /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART when it is inserted; removing the adapter causes its entry in ls /dev/cu* to disappear
• screen /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART 57600 causes a new window to appear
• Nothing ever appears in the window, even if I reset the WiTi

I'm looking for advice for what to check next. Do Rx & Tx need to be swapped? Should I see log messages while the WiTi is booting? Thanks!

UPDATE: Yes, the Rx and Tx wires need to be swapped. They should be (Gnd -> Gnd, Rx -> Tx, Tx -> Rx). Pressing Return now elicits the busybox prompt and I'm on the air.