I picked up my µArt at the post office (it actually arrived a few days ago, I just didn't get around to visiting the post office earlier) and gave it a quick test run now. I brought up the serial console of one of my Raspberry Pi's that was sitting on my desk anyway for an experiment.
Well, I'm happy that the µArt comes with reverse polarity protection etc., because I misremembered the Raspi's pinout and promptly connected µArt GND to the Raspi's 5V pin. Whoops. The clever PWR led wiring made it immediately clear that something was wrong though, and as expected both the Raspi and the µArt are unharmed.
As far as actual usage is concerned, it's plug'n'play, at least on Linux. But even on other OSes, if you bought the µArt, chances are you installed the FTDI drivers already and it'll just work as well. Connecting the GPI pin to a LED was clever, since that works without any software magic, giving you an additional indicator for some random output pin on the DUT. What I'd like to have seen is an additional LED for the CTS pin (maybe inverted).
The included breakout cable is labelled with heatshrink tubing which is nice; I particularly like that the directional pins have arrows on them indicating the data direction. This removes any ambiguity about whether "TXD" means the host's TXD, or the device's. There's a second jumper cable included, although I'm not sure what the point is there. It's a male/female one, which means it might serve as an extension for the breakout cable, *shrug*. A male/male cable would have made more sense to me, for use when the DUT has female pin sockets instead of pins, like, say, and Arduino.
The USB cable is nice but overkill. It comes with extra wide power wires, metal grips and even two velcro cable ties. A cheaper, more simple cable would have worked just as well for this application (and maybe better if the thinner cable is more flexible). But I guess pylo wanted to create a high quality product (and he did!), so including a high quality cable was a matter of pride.
I can see why pylo is very happy with the case, it turned out very well. But... is there a way to open it without damaging it? As far as I can tell, the tiny thing is held together by 15 (!) rather strong plastic clips, and you need to press down on many of them at the same time to open it. Of course, there's no real need to open it, but still, I like to inspect my hardware.
And an idea just came to me: I have an old JTAGkey2, made my Amontec, but of course they went out of business in 2012, so you can no longer get them. I like the device because it's inexpensive but fast enough to be useful. I believe it uses the FT232H chip. So how about a µJTAG-Adapter with the same style and design philosophy as the µArt? I'd buy it!
