Convert To USB

USB to I2C Module

If you are an electronic hobbyist, you will find there are some chips that have the Inter-Integrated Circuit or I2C serial communications bus that controls the particular device. The advantage of such an interface is that you only need two signal lines (plus ground) for the entire bus regardless of how many devices you hook up.

The USB-I2C module is a I2C master (controls the bus) that powers itself from the USB.  It uses the FTDI FT232R USB chip and FTDI’s corresponding Virtual COM Port drivers on Windows.  The FTDI chip also works on Windows, Mac OSX, linux, and Open BSD.

This device is very convenient because you can open the com port in the programming language of you choice and send out a series of 8 bit commands in the form of output characters to perform various operations on the I2C bus.  There is a nice example on how to read inputs on a PCF8574 I/O expander on the Technical Specifications web page.

Available from Robot Electronics 16.56 UK pounds.

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