fbsdembdev/serial.md

Overview of USB serial

There are lots of different features each brand. Finding out those features are difficult so hopefully this will bring the information together in a single spot.

Major Players

1. FTDI (uftdi)
2. Prolific (uplcom)

Minor Players

1. WinChipHead (CH340) (uchcom)
2. Silicon Laboratories (uslcom)

There are many additional third tier players as well.

Details

FTDI

They are probably most common.

Pros

Wide availability.

Cons

They have played dirt w/ their offical drivers to combat conterfit devices from bricking devices, to sending junk on the serial port when detecting couterfit devices.

Prolific

Pros

Cons

Special hardware needed to program serial number. And Windows only software.

Silicon Laboratories

Pros

Can program serial number: https://github.com/emaste/cp210x-cfg

Cons