Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Using FTDI USB to serial converter in Linux - Ubuntu

I recently purchased an FTDI USB to serial converter - FT232RL. However I could not use it properly in Windows. With some googling, I could find a way to use it under linux. Following are the steps to be used in Ubuntu to get it working.

Open a terminal and type the following commands.

sudo modprobe ftdi_sio
sudo chmod 666 /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id
nano /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id

In the file that got opened, type 0403 8a8a and save it. The number can be found by typing lsusb in another terminal.
Now unplug and re-plug the module. Type 

ls /dev

and you should see /ttyUSB0 in the list. Now use some serial terminal (like screen) to view the data !
For opening a screen session, the following command is used. Here 115200 is the baud rate.

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200