I'm brand new to Arduino (never even heard of it until yesterday actually), and similar devices. I'm a computer scientist by background, with computer engineering, electronics and mechanical background, so I'm fairly confident in my ability to do tasks like this. Problem is, I'm not sure exactly if I understand the process of what I'm trying to do (yet).
Basically, Logitec Revue, which runs Google TV software, needs to be rooted so it can access what other TV devices can access, but aren't blocked by mainstream media's fear of Google advertising.
The steps on how to do it are listed below, but I've no clue on why I'd need a USB-TTL board, vs simply connecting a custom wire to my PC's serial port, and using a software program on my computer to do essentially the same thing as the USB-TTL board?
RS232 serial ports use +12v/-12v signal levels. TTL (Transistor/Transistor Logic) uses +5v/0v signal levels (or sometimes 3.3v/0v). You are likely to damage the TTL receiver if you connect an RS232 signal to it.
You can use a level shifter to convert RS232 to TTL.
Most modern laptops don't have a serial port and only have USB so USB-to-TTL is a more general solution.
If you have an Arduino you can pull out the ATmega chip and just use the USB-to-TTL part of the board as if it were a USB-to-TTL cable.
And RS232 is inverted compared to TTL signals, so you need something like a max232 to convert rs-232 to ttl and maybe a logic port to invert it then, or take the atmega328p out of the arduino and use the digital 0 and 1 because they are connected to the ftdi chip that is in fact an usb-ttl serial converter, only if you use the duemilanove or older, the newer Uno uses an atmega32u2 that does the usb-serial convertion, but it migh work as well.
