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Showing posts from October, 2014

FTDI: The Clone Wars

I saw an article on Hackaday that talked about an FTDI driver update on windows that purposefully set the PID of the device to 0 on fake or 'cloned' FTDI chips. I've also seen a bit of confusion on this topic, so I'd like to clarify a few points. First, what is FTDI ? Basically, this company makes products that allow micro-controllers to communicate to a USB host, like your computer. The make both drivers, hardware, and most importantly here, chips. 1) Many people aren't aware if they even have a fake One of the first arguments that I saw was in regards to how users should be punished for using a fake chip. Most of the people using these products are using end products, or products that are made using these chips. It's much easier for someone to include an FTDI chip with their device than to go through all of the trouble and cost of getting their own Vendor and Product ID. So, some devices have these chips in them without their users ever really knowing.