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[Reddog]

This may not be news to the more technical people but it was news to me, so I figured I would put the information up here.

I was playing around with a a GPS last night and I needed to get it connected to my computer so I could configure it. Sadly it only had UART (serial) out and I don't have a USB to FTDI cable. I looked around in my box of crap and thought it might be possible to use the USB to Xbee board I got from Sparkfun as an alternative. Luckily it was. The Xbee can provide both 3.3v and 5v power and can handle the Tx and Rx of the serial connection.

The following was the pinout:

GPS ---   USB to Xbee
Tx --- Rx
Rx --- Tx
5v --- 5v
Ground --- Gnd

The 5v pin on the USB to Xbee board is not available via the female connectors on the board so I used a solderless pin to connect to the 5v output.

If you are wondering how you work out the pinouts, just look at the bottom of your board or check google for an Xbee pinout.

The USB to Xbee board I am talking about is here - http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8687

You could use other boards, I have also used this one - http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9819 , I figure most USB to Xbee boards would be useful.

[dankers]

Nice discovery, the explorer is a FTDI board really, just with magical headers to fit Xbees.

If you are every really stuck for USB to serial, just use your CopterControl, Jose wrote some firmware to turn the CC in to a USB to serial convertor.