The JeeLabs Shop

The USB BUB-II board has been engineered to be an affordable, flexible USB connector with lots of applications. It uses the popular FT232R chip, the same as Arduinos, the FTDI cable, and the Spark Fun breakout boards. This board has a few features not found on some other USB boards though.

• A polyfuse to protect the USB line from short circuits.
• Two LEDs to show serial activity on the TX / RX lines.
• A shunt to switch the logic levels from 5 to 3.3 volts. This shunt doesn’t switch the power though, the 3.3 V pin from the FT232R is available but remember that it’s only good for 50 mA of current. There is room to add an SMD 3.3 V regulator too.
• One pin header, connected in the pin order of the FTDI RS232 cable (the same as the JeeNode / BBB / RBBB / LilyPad / Arduino Pro pin header, with the added bonus of having the DTR line instead of having to use the RTS line (and its attendant quirks).
• The USB-BUB is shipped with some headers and a shunt,. All other parts are mounted and the board has been tested and is ready to go.

The USB BUB-II is provided without a USB A to mini cable. This is the same one that your digital camera connects with, so you can use the one you already have or get an extra for your camera.

USB Instructions and Schematic

Optiboot - Customers using the Optiboot bootloader should solder up one of the Logic Level options (LGLV jumpers on the board). The Arduino Deicimila / Duemilanove bootloader works fine with the logic level pin floating (VCCIO - pin 4 on the FTDI chip) but the Optiboot bootloader does not, probably because of the higher upload speed. The BUB seems to upload with Optiboot with either the 5V or 3.3V option soldered, but will  not upload to Optiboot with the option floating (nothing soldered). To add the final caveat - if you use the 3.3V option, you also need to solder up the 3.3V option on the back of the BUB II.