FTDI Breakout USB-to-UART Board

This FTDI breakout is one of those bench tools that is not very glamorous, but you end up using all the time. It is a USB-to-UART board based on a genuine FT232RL, with selectable 5 V or 3.3 V logic levels.

I made it because serial adapters are part of almost every embedded workflow: programming boards, reading logs, debugging firmware, checking boot messages, or just talking to a microcontroller from a terminal. When that adapter is unreliable, everything else becomes harder to debug.

The board exposes the useful UART signals, includes basic USB-side protection, and keeps the voltage selection clear. Nothing exotic, just the kind of practical details that make a tool nicer to use on a real electronics bench.

For me, this project belongs to the category of small infrastructure. It does not try to be impressive; it tries to remove friction from the next project.