uart serial current? What should be expected?

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
3

  1. To limit the current in case a wire became shorted etc ... ( breadboard )

  2. After noting your comment I looked up your schematic and verified there are indeed 1K ohm resistors, however they are not pull down resistors, they go to the RX TX portion of the ft232rl chip. For this scenario to be plausible the ft232rl chip would have to ground the TX and RX portions of the chip which would put me close to explaining the current draw I found. This scenario however seems increasingly likely as putting the resistance below 1k would then put the data signal slightly about vcc/2 ...

  3. As funny as you think your comment is, connecting a data line from a chip is no different ... other than the 3v3 is pulsed... and i need to verify that the current draw was what I suspected ... 5 ma is well within specs.