Mega Serial Port to USB

[SirMichael]

Hopefully a simple question...

Can I connect a USB cable to one of the 4 serial ports on an Arduino Mega?
I am using 2 of the 4 ports for Serial (using an RS232 converter) ports to communicate with a radio.

I want to use one of the other 2 ports to communicate with another type of radio that has a USB (MicroUSB type) connector.

Can I wire the Rx & Tx directly to the USB cable Rx & Tx or do I need some sort of converter?

Thanks,
Sir Michael

[johnwasser]

@SirMichael

Can I connect a USB cable to one of the 4 serial ports on an Arduino Mega?

Not easily. The MEGA has an separate ATmega16u2 or 32U4 processor on board to act as a USB-to-Serial converter. That is how the MEGA talks to your PC via Serial.

What is usually connected to the radio's USB port?

[SirMichael]

The serial ports for the different radios is normally an RS 232 connection (I have used a converter in the past).

I have been studying this problem and found out that basically I need a serial to USB converter if I want to try communicating through USB to the radio. However apparently there is A fair amount of complexity with the HMI interface, drivers, etc.

This particular radio, and ICOM IC-705 also has a Bluetooth interface so I am planning on trying that. My only quandary to get started is how to set up the Arduino IDE to download to the ESP32 board. I’ll have to figure that out.

Thanks for the reply.

Sir Michael