This board converts a USB connection into a 5 volt Serial TX and RX that you can connect straight to the Arduino Mini, Arduino Ethernet or other microcontrollers, allowing them to talk to the computer.

The USB Serial Adapter has an onboard USB connector and 5 pins including RX (for receiving data from the computer) and TX (for transmitting data). 5V, Ground and a Reset pin are also exposed.

Status lights include power, RX and TX activity.

The adapter can easily connect to the Arduino Ethernet, Mini, Mini Pro, LilyPad, LilyPad Simple, and Fio.

An onboard polyfuse limits the current to 500mA and protects the host computer from short circuits.

Automatic (Software) Reset

The USB Serial connector is designed in a way that allows it to reset an attached board by software running on a connected computer.The external reset line mirrors the DTR line of the virtual serial device on the computer. It's typically connected to the reset line of the connected board (e.g. an Arduino Ethernet board) through a 100 nF capacitor, allowing the board to reset on upload.

This setup has other implications. When the board is connected to either a computer running Mac OS X or Linux, it resets each time a connection is made to it from software (via USB). While it is programmed to ignore malformed data (i.e. anything besides an upload of new code), it will intercept the first few bytes of data sent to the board after a connection is opened. If a sketch running on the board receives one-time configuration or other data when it first starts, make sure that the software with which it communicates waits a second after opening the connection and before sending this data.

The pinouts on the connector are compatible with a standard FTDI header ( as well as the Adafruit and Sparkfun USB-Serial adapters).