FTDI Community

General Category => Discussion - Software => Topic started by: bridgethegap on January 10, 2020, 03:13:39 PM

Title: Vinculum II bridging UART to a FT232HL/Q
Post by: bridgethegap on January 10, 2020, 03:13:39 PM

All,
I recently purchased the Vinculum II chip to bridge UART to a FT232HL/Q (pid 6014) device.  I downloaded the precompiled firmware from the project "UART to FT232 Host Sample Application ROM" on the FTDI web page.  I was expecting this application to work out of the box, but I'm having issues on the V2DIP1 development board.  Other than a modification in the source code to adjust for the default pid, 6001 vs 6014, are there any other changes I should need out of the box?  I'm running a 256000 baud rate and have made the appropriate baud rate changes to the code as well.  I'm scoping the usb data lines to the FT232HL chip and do not see any activity when I initiate communications.  Using the debugger, the firmware fails in ft232_host_attach() either trying to find the FT232 device or performing the attach.  Does anyone have any ideas? 

Thanks in advance. 

Jason

Title: Re: Vinculum II bridging UART to a FT232HL/Q
Post by: FTDI Community on January 15, 2020, 11:02:29 AM

Hello Jason,

V2DIP1 gives access to USB Port2 but "UART to FT232 Host Sample Application ROM" is built to access USB Port 1.

You could consider editing the code and rebuilding for USB Port 2, or purchasing V2DIP2 which gives access to both ports.
However, consider the information below.

Vinculum-II (http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/ICs/VNC2.htm) is a very mature products and has been superseded by FT9xx.

Hosting FT232 devices with these older Vinculum-II products can be unreliable.
It takes a lot of the MCUs resources to run the FT232 device code (eg FT232Uart) so there can be performance issues.
I wouldn’t recommend using this product for this application because you will most likely run into problems.

The best solution we have is our FT90x (http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/ICs/FT90x.html) MCU.

There are lots of other examples available:

AN_360 FT9xx Example Applications (http://brtchip.com/wp-content/uploads/Support/Documentation/Application_Notes/ICs/MCU/AN-360-FT9xx-Example-Applications.pdf)
FT90x Software Examples (http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/SoftwareExamples/FT90X.htm)
FT9xx Software Examples (http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/SoftwareExamples/FT9XX.htm)

Take a look at FT90x UART to FT232 Host Bridge (http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/SoftwareExamples/FT90X.htm#FT90x UART to FT232 Host Bridge), there is already a software example which can host FTDI devices.
A video has been created which demonstrates this:

https://youtu.be/_vwOKFaOcJI  (https://youtu.be/_vwOKFaOcJI)

There are significant benefits of FT90x:

-Eclipse based IDE
-Source code for API drivers is provided
-Significant performance improvement
-Actively in development by R&D
-Improved documentation and software examples

We provide FT9xx Development Modules (http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/Modules/MCUModules.htm) and a free FT9xx Toolchain (http://www.ftdichip.com/Firmware/FT90xToolchain.htm) for custom application development.

Best Regards,
FTDI Community

Title: Re: Vinculum II bridging UART to a FT232HL/Q
Post by: bridgethegap on February 16, 2020, 08:30:11 PM

Thank you.  Using the FT90x worked as you described. 

As an aside, is there a way to configure the FT90X MCU to accept RS232 instead of TTL/UART?  I'm interested in translating 232 signals, but will use a MAX232 chip.  However, I've read that some micros can perform this conversion.  Thanks.

Jason

Title: Re: Vinculum II bridging UART to a FT232HL/Q
Post by: FTDI Community on February 18, 2020, 04:31:43 PM

Hello Jason,

The FT90x is unable to accept RS232. An external RS232 transceiver is required to convert from TTL to RS232.

Best Regards,
FTDI Community