Electronic – Is interfacing the 5V TTL UART with 3.3V microcontroller via voltage divider possible

ttlvoltage divider

I need to connect my MSP430 microcontroller (3.3V) to interact with a 5V TTL UART camera (http://www.cn-lcf.net/sdp/561974/4/pd-2909996/7575433-2127043/LCF-23M_OV528_Protocol_RS232_Camera_Module.html).

In order to do that I came up with the idea of dropping the camera's TX port from 5V to 3.3V level by a voltage divider.

The MCU TX to camera RX does not need a voltage divider and since it's a TTL camera the 3.3V from the MCU shall be enough to drive the camera's input high (https://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/assets/6/d/7/7/4/515385fdce395f0905000000.png).

Will that work?

Best Answer

This is quite commonly done but keep resistances low so that there is little chance the rise times and fall times of the data signal are not unduly lengthened. As PeterJ says in his comment, something around 1k will be OK.

There are devices that you can buy that do this (8 bit wide and bi-directional) but if you only have one signal to modify then resistors are the best choice.