# PyFtdi

## Documentation

The latest PyFtdi online documentation is always available from here.

Beware the online version may be more recent than the PyPI hosted version, as intermediate development versions are not published to PyPi.

PyFtdi documentation can be locally build with Sphinx, see the installation instructions.

## Source code

PyFtdi releases are available from the Python Package Index from PyPi.

PyFtdi development code is available from GitHub.

## Overview

PyFtdi aims at providing a user-space driver for popular FTDI devices, implemented in pure Python language.

Supported FTDI devices include:

- UART and GPIO bridges

  - FT232R (single port, 3Mbps)

  - FT230X/FT231X/FT234X (single port, 3Mbps)

- UART and multi-serial protocols (SPI, I2C, JTAG) bridges

  - FT2232C/D (dual port, clock up to 6 MHz)

  - FT232H (single port, clock up to 30 MHz)

  - FT2232H (dual port, clock up to 30 MHz)

  - FT4232H (quad port, clock up to 30 MHz)

## Features

PyFtdi currently supports the following features:

- UART/Serial USB converter, up to 12Mbps (depending on the FTDI device capability)

- GPIO/Bitbang support, with 8-bit asynchronous, 8-bit synchronous and 8-/16-bit MPSSE variants

- SPI master, with simultanous GPIO support, up to 12 pins per port, with support for non-byte sized transfer

- I2C master, with simultanous GPIO support, up to 14 pins per port

- Basic JTAG master capabilities

- EEPROM support (some parameters cannot yet be modified, only retrieved)

- Experimental CBUS support on selected devices, 4 pins per port

## Supported host OSes

- macOS

- Linux

- FreeBSD

- Windows, although not officially supported

## Warning

Starting with version v0.40.0, several API changes are being introduced. While PyFtdi tries to maintain backward compatibility with previous versions, some of these changes may require existing clients to update calls to PyFtdi.

Do not upgrade to v0.40.0 or above without testing your client against the new PyFtdi releases. PyFtdi versions up to v0.39.9 keep a stable API with v0.22+ series.

See the Major Changes section on the online documentation for details about potential API breaks.

### Major changes

> - read methods now return `bytearray` instead of Array(‘B’) so that pyserial `readline()` may be used. It also brings some performance improvements.

> - PyFtdi URLs now supports `bus:address` alternative specifiers, which required to augment the `open_*()` methods with new, optional parameters.

> - `SpiController` reserves only one slave line (/CS) where it used to reserve 4 slave lines in previous releases. This frees more GPIOs when default value is used - it is nevertheless still possible to reserve up to 5 slave lines.

> - type hinting is used for most, if not all, public methods.

> - simplified baudrate divider calculation.

## PyFTDI in details

- Features
- Requirements
- Installation
- URL Scheme
- Tools
- API documentation
- FTDI device pinout
- GPIOs
- EEPROM management
- Testing
- Troubleshooting
- Authors
- License