[BPI-R4] UART0 serial port voltage tolerance

EasyNet · July 7, 2024, 2:32pm

Hi all,

Unfortunately BPi-R4 doesn’t have a USB to serial interface integrated. Now I’m using a MAX3232 powered from the board at 3.3V and using an external RS232 to USB cable. Because of this I’m trying to hack a little bit my BPI-R4 and add a USB to serial IC, like CP2104, inside the case with an USB-C female connector to one of the holes in case:

I want to power this chip from USB-C cable and not to use any additional cabling on BPI-R4, because I don’t have a power pin for UART0. In this way the chip will be turned off when I don’t use serial port.

From the schematics we have the UART0:

But in the MT7988 documents I can’t figured out if is 3.3V or can work also with 5V:

frank-w · July 7, 2024, 2:46pm

Only 3v3 please…and there are ftdi232rl with usb-c but hard to mount in case because they do not have holes.

So my way was to bring pins to outside and leave the usb2serial also outside…on r2 i had also mounted adapter inside

EasyNet · July 7, 2024, 2:57pm

Hi @frank-w,

Thanks for quick answer. I checked CP2104 and it uses 3.3V as main Vdd:

I can find a place where to glue the PCB and then I go with cables to a USB-C female receptacle glue to the hole.

Lorem_amicus · July 7, 2024, 5:04pm

I also “worked” on this this mounting hole problem:

For CP2102N i found this:

Adafruit has also something (with a poor hole design):

Because I’m a laiman, and often destroy my stuff with short circuits, i wanted to be safe. So I decided for an isolated USB to UART Adapter:

But the chip is a WCH CH340C.

The voltlink and CAPUF embedded boards I have at home. But not tested yet …

frank-w · July 7, 2024, 5:07pm

Cp2102 do not work well with mediatek filogic…on r3 we had issues with wifi

Ch340 mostly have 5v,so be careful

Lorem_amicus · July 7, 2024, 5:24pm

Oh no

With R3 i use a Adapter from DSD TECH: SH-U09B3 which has also the CP2102N

CP2102N should be better than the CP2102 and CP2104. I had not problems with CP2102N, but because I’m connected via UART I did not “look” for wifi

The board from CAPUF embedded has DIP switch for 3,3 volt. May be its better I check it before the connection. I try not to destroy my board <again …>

frank-w · July 7, 2024, 5:39pm

the problem with wifi on r3 was because of pulldown of uart / pullup of adapter

EasyNet · July 7, 2024, 5:40pm

What I’ve noticed:

My pl2303 (067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port / Mobile Phone Data Cable) adapter with one RS232 was worked ok with MT7988 until yesterday or 2 days ago when Debian upgraded the kernel to 6.9.7. After upgrade is working for few minutes and then is not receiving anything.
My FTDI adapters (0403:6010 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT2232C/D/H Dual UART/FIFO IC) is working fine. Is a dual RS232.
My adapter from Odroid XU4 with CP210x (10c4:ea60 Silicon Labs CP210x UART Bridge) is not working. This one is using 1.5V for power and also for RX/TX. I believe this is and issue.

1 and 2 I have to use MAX3232 to convert TTL to RS232 using 3.3V power from board.

I’ve ordered a CP2104 on 3.3V and I will test it. Is working at 3.3V and is powered from USB bus. So I will solder an USB-C PCB+Connector to the hole and trace some cables to this adapter. To the board I will connect only 3 cables: RX, TX and GND.

@Lorem_amicus the one with glavanic isolated sides is pretty overkill. Is pretty big as dimensions. I don’t have too many events with short-circuits, so I will go on simple path , but for others can be a solution.

ericwoud · July 7, 2024, 7:49pm

Suggest ft232rl module, always works well with different hardware. If you want isolation use a lot of electrical tape or cover the entire module with hot glue from gun.

oli · July 7, 2024, 9:12pm

maybe a feature request for one of the next versions of the board: serial-usb-adapter integrated. i loved that on my old clearfog. using a mini usb cable. nothing to worry about power supply (3.3 vs 5), correct pin layout (rx/tx) etc.

Lorem_amicus · July 7, 2024, 9:20pm

Yes, galvanic isolated is uncommon. This is right. It is my way, the price was not so much bigger.

We shouldn’t talk about the chips from Silabs in a general way like CP210x. Sorry, I made this mistake by myself!

The Silabs chips on the Voltlink Ref E and DSD TECH SH-U09B3 are CP2102N-A02. This is very important:

The common mistake of many people is to think, that the CP2104 is better than the CP2102N but be aware of this!:

I’m not a fan of Silabs. If it is not working, I will looking for something else! Big THANKS @frank-w for the link:

I now read it. If I understand the problem right, this is caused by hardware in combination with adapter firmware.

I’m a bit surpriced of the problem, because I use my R3 (Version 1.1) longer than a year and I have setting up all things including wifi with no problem. This is why I decided for Voltlink Rev E board … I will watch out for the problem!

@ericwoud: Your tonge is a sharp knife! But your commant causes some fun, after my brain trieded to find an answer for the question how I can use a USB to UART adapter after I covered the whole thing with electrical tape.

EasyNet · July 17, 2024, 2:17pm

Today I received my 2x CP2104 and USB-C connectors.

The CP2104 PCB looks like this:

In my Linux machine looks like this:

And it works very well:

And I can confirm is 3.3V the TTL signal. I has 3.46V not connected to the board:

And 3.34 - 3.37V connected to the board:

Next step is to unsolder USB-A connector + DUPPON connectors from PCB, add USB-C with a cable from the whole till the PCB, fix the PCB somewhere in the case and that’s it.

I will post when I will have the finish product.