Electronic – How to connect a TVS to protect the data lines in a USB device port

Good assumptions. But no. You missed one part of the datasheet. Section 5.3 shows:

• 3V3
• 3.3v regulator output
• Min 2.97 > Typical 3.3 > Max 3.63 in Volts
• VCC must be greater than 3V3 otherwise 3V3OUT is an input which must be driven with 3.3V

The 3.3v LDO is a Low Drop Out regulator. The datasheet does not specifically state how much of a drop voltage is required (How much greater VCC needs to be than 3v3). At 3.6v VCC, that would give 0.3v of a drop out voltage, which is well within most LDO minimum range.

Emailing FTDI would be your best option though, as they are always welcoming and helpful on design issues.

Also, page 7 is for the QFN version of the chip, with different pinout from the SSOP version. Double check which you have and are referencing to, as the pinouts are not same.

Edit: As Oli has pointed out, there is a Errata for the FT230x that shows an issue with the 3v3 LDO in the Rev. B chips. This does not affect Rev A, or Rev C (latest). For both packages, you can tell the Revision by:

The date code format is YYXX where XX = 2 digit week number, YY = 2 digit year number. This is followed by the revision number (A/B/C).

You don't need to use USB at all. The interface to scanner is actually UART TTL levels. SparkFun's demo is using an FTDI cable because they needed to hook up to a PC. You can just cross connect the TX/RX pins of one of the UARTs on your PIC32 with the TX/RX leads of the scanner.

Since you don't have any UARTs available, you can replace any of the existing hardware UARTs with a software bit-banged solution using two spare pins. That would seem to be easier than dealing with all the USB stuff.

Edit to reflect comments:

Here is code for a software UART in C. It is for the PIC16, but you should be able to modify it for the PIC32. The code is interrupt driven, so assuming you don't have any interrupt pins (INTx) left, you can use any pin that is marked as an Input Change Notification (CNxx) which will generate a interrupt when the pin changes state.