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First of all, sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm pretty new to the whole Serial RS232 concepts.

I do have an Arduino Board that, from what I read about, is not able to communicate via RS232 because of different levels.

My question now is: If the Joy-IT RS232 Shield will make up for that. So is this shield handling the RS232 level shift? I don't really know what to look for so I am asking here.

Thanks!

timemage
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Strohhut
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1 Answers1

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Yes, that shield will handle the level shifting for you. If you look closely at the images of the shield, you see the MAX232 chip, which is a commonly used chip for getting UART (which is the Serial interface of the Arduino) to speak over RS232.

And yes, RS232 uses different voltage levels. The UART on a microcontroller usually uses the voltages 0V and 5V (or 3.3V depending on it's supply voltage), which is also called TTL levels (Transistor-Transistor Logic), while RS232 mostly works with +-10V (though different voltages are also inside the standard). You see, that this is a symmetrical voltage around ground (0V).

chrisl
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