Could someone please direct me how to interface with this chip? I am a total newbie in electronics, and after buying this chip, well, i have absolutely no idea how to connect it.
The chip has an USB port, so i was sure that it needs to be connected through it to a PC (perhaps with some jumper setting). I couldn't find a double male usb-a cable, so i bought parts for it with the chip. The USB parts didn't reach me, so i was going to use some old mice and printer cables to salvage the parts – but that made me think – is it really a good idea to connect it like this? I'm just trying to connect it and check what happens – hopefully some hint on how to go from there, not a fire. Hell, i don't even know the pin order for such a cable.
I bought the V2DIP1 hoping i could cut down costs of my robot i decided on a FTDI chip instead of an arduino ADK to get a serial connection from an android device to an Arduino or directly a H-Brdige, or a button/sensor etc. My reasoning was that the ADK devices have and FTDI chip internaly anyway (they do, right?), and i have a arduino uno already.
So, what i need from this chip is at least to make some connection to android (or even a PC, for now) and set/read some pins on/from it – any hints on how to do this, please?
The chip i bought: http://www.tme.eu/en/details/v2dip1-48/ftdi-modules/ftdi/
An FTDI tutorial on how to attach to android (but the board is different :/): http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/SoftwareExamples/Android_Projects.htm
Best Answer
Connecting the USB-A on the board to the PC is not the solution. According to the v2dip1 data sheet at http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/DataSheets/Modules/DS_V2DIP1-48.pdf a custom debugger interface is required to load firmware.
The interface is documented with a schematic in the application note: http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/AppNotes/AN_138_Vinculum-II_Debug_Interface_Description.pdf
It appears to consist of an FT232R usb-serial converter and some logic to produce a bidirectional serial signal from the separate transmit/receive lines, as well as some mode pins.