|  | The FT232BM is a chip made by FTDI, a european ASIC manufacturer, 
              it does all the work of communicating to a computer via USB and 
              then translating that into 5V RS-232 data. If you want that data 
              to be 'understandable' to a serial peripheral, you need to levelshift 
              it using something like the MAX232, which generates the +-12V used 
              with serial. This chip is ideal for simple microcontroller projects that need 
              to talk to a computer, although serial is a slow protocol for data 
              transfer (not much more than 10K/s). One of the great perks of USB 
              is that the computer provides 5V power, 100mA for USB 1.1 and 500mA 
              for USB 2.0, so you can run your project straight off of USB. |  |