A quick little board to replace Level Shifters and a 9pin connector.
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Amphenol makes some nice panel mount USB connectors (MUSBD11130) that are easy to mount to a case. They are also sealed. The connectors solder to the PCB for an adequate mechanical setup. FTDI makes single channel USB to UART chips that don't need an external crystal or voltage regulator, just a few passive components. One of the 0.100 screw terminal strips provides a simple connection for wiring to. The resulting board is small and easy to put in a project.
PanelMountUART_Bare.pdfSchematic for Panel Mount UARTAdobe Portable Document Format - 132.78 kB - 03/12/2018 at 23:25 |
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I really like the functionality that this project provides. I have used it in several projects. The USB connector is a nice, sealed connector, but it is expensive at $8.76US. I did a second iteration on the PCB using a surface mount Hirose connector that costs under $1US. Panel mounting is acheived by drilling and tapping a couple of small pieces of aluminum.
The other expensive part in the project is the 6 position screw terminal strip. The Phoenix Contact screw terminal strip costs $4.70. Replacing it with 0.1'' header strip is less than $1. Using the header strip allows using a simple connector that is easy to mate and unmate rather than unscrewing each wire and reversing that to reconnect it.
The rest of the board is pretty much the same.
Another option to get RS232 to a computer is BlueTooth. Ditch the wires and get isolation too. Microchip has a family of SOCs that work out of the box and include an RS232 interface. They'll talk SPP so you can use a terminal emulator. I think the current iteration is the RN4678. I've used them for several projects and they work well.
Bharbour
ajlitt
danjovic
Sam Ettinger
James
I don't really have anything to connect to the other end of a BlueTooth link in my shop.