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Revision 2 - Coming Soon(ish)

A project log for FT232 - Fibre Optic Interface

A minimal board to interface the FTDI USB serial converter with a pair of fibre Tx/Rx.

jamesJames 01/06/2020 at 20:020 Comments

So, I've decided to resurrect this semi-dead project.

The original project served it's (very) short term goal of monitoring a serial data stream, and logging any anomalies to a CSV file.  This was achieved using a laptop running a Python 3 script utilising PySerial (GitHub RepoDocumentation), logging to a CSV.  I'll post this code, when I can find it.  I have to warn though, it's not pretty!

Since "completing" the original project I have been thinking of a number of upgrades and improvements that could be made to the hardware.  Namely, some sort of enclosure.  Much preferable to covering the whole board with a length of 50mm wide clear heatshrink as I did previously.

The upgrades and changes I plan to make are as follows.  Not all will find their way into the final iteration:

I also plan to look at the protection available on the USB data & power lines.  I want to ensure this is sufficient and appropriate for the application.

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