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FTDI cable for EQMOD

simon84

By simon84
in Member Equipment Reviews

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simon84

simon84

Posted
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Well I ordered my FTDI_cable a few days ago and it arrived today.

This is the cable recommended on the EQMOD website to allow a direct USB connection between the mount and the PC.

It arrived fairly promptly via courier and as soon as I had opened the packet it was all ready to be soldered up to a 9 pin D-Sub male plug.

One small thing, when soldering, I soldered up pins 6 and 9 first and the flipped the plug over to solder pins 4 and 5, because of the flip and a bit of carelessness on my part I inadvertently soldered up pins 1 and 2 instead as you can see below.....in the words of the ever great Homer Simpson.....DOH!!!!!!!!

slysi84-albums-odds-sods-picture6249-ftdi-cable-soldered-d-plug.jpg

All is sorted now and after allowing to cool I popped the D-Sub cover on and popped it downstairs to the awaiting mount and laptop.

After installing the necessary driver for the cable I set the port in EQMOD and fired everthing up.

All was working lovely and I was able to slew to a target in Carte de Ciel V3. I tried to go to a second target but I got a limit error in EQMOD.

All works really nicely and I have to say having owned the Hitec Astro EQDIR connector I do prefer just having a single USB cable. Its much neater and alot easier to route and it remembers its COM port number so you only ever have to set it up once.

So the cable came in at £16, FTDI's delivery charges are a bit on the expensive side at just under £6 and the plug and cover were a couple of quid from Maplins. So ignoring the shipping cost thats an EQMOD cable for under £20. Cant be bad.

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simon84

simon84

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That price is just obscene. I did just google the FTDI lead and found someone selling it cheaper than FTDI........thats what patience and research does. Ahwell. I have one now so thats that I guess, hopefully someone can make use of the cheaper prices that have been pointed out.

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MarkF

MarkF

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I popped a bit of electrical tape around mine just in case.

I imagine there maybe some out there with some old clunky soldering irons who when finished have theirs looking like the top of a pineapple....;):mad: :mad:

Oi! Referee........

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chrisshillito

chrisshillito

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Anyone repeating this would be well advised to add shrink tubing around the solder joints to avoid the possibility of short circuits.

Or, if you have a multimeter to hand (to buzz out the connections), just buy a ready made "sealed" RS232 cable of ebay, cut to your desired length and splice to the FTDI cable (or direct to the board). You may even find this a cheaper option than buying a connector and shell case (and you get two 9 way connectors into the bargain).

Chris.

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simon84

simon84

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Mine has been fully tested now and I will be taking it apart again just to make sure its all clear in there, I did temporarily pop some electrical tape around each pin but that looks very messy so something more permanent will now be done.

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  • 8 months later...
NickK

NickK

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I use a Windows 7 32bit install with FTDI's VCP drivers from the FTDI website. The VCP drivers are the ones that give you COM ports (or /dev/cu.<name> for UNIX/OSX).

If you want to insulate - heat shrink tubing is very good (put on before soldering) but I use a butane iron so switching to the heat gun attachment works well :eek:

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