Serial Fiber Modem

The Serial Fiber Modem combines a CH340C USB-to-Serial bridge with a fiber receiver and emitter pair from Industrial Fiber Optics and it is the easiest way to start playing with fiber communication right out of the box. Simply insert a piece of fiber cable between the emitter and receiver, open a serial terminal at any baud rate up to 1Mbps, and watch your messages bounce back! Connect to another Serial Fiber Modem or use it in conjunction with our other Fiber Optics breakouts to create your own fiber links.

The Industrial Fiber Optics line of emitters and detectors are by far the most economical way we’ve found to create a simple fiber link between two devices. The IF-E97 emitter is literally just a superbright red LED in a fancy plastic module that makes it easy to insert a piece of optical fiber and lock it in place. On the other end, the IF-D96F is a 5v TTL phototransistor in an identical enclosure. Connect the two with a piece of fiber and you have, basically, the simplest possible fiber link. Speaking of fiber, while you can certainly use glass fiber (in the proper jacket) to connect these modules together, we recommend PMMA plastic fiber! It’s cheap, it’s not at all fragile, and you can cut it with scissors. In our experience, it requires no polishing at all, simply cut it with scissors and jam it into the connector.

The emitter and detector are soldered but not screwed into place. For field applications we recommend anchoring the connectors with a screw and nut. A 4-40 screw with nut works great but we don't carry the ideal 3/8" length. Alternatively we do carry a 3/8" screw and nut in the smaller 2-56 thread.

We've tested these modules at baud rates up to 1Mbps and distances up to 50 meters with no transmission errors.

Experimental Product: SparkX products are rapidly produced to bring you the most cutting edge technology as it becomes available. These products are tested but come with no guarantees. Live technical support is not available for SparkX products. Head on over to our forum for support or to ask a question.

Features:

• Easily create fiber serial links between USB host devices
• Supports Serial Baud Rates up to 1Mbps
• Based on CH340C USB-to-Serial Bridge IC which requires no special drivers on most PCs

Documents:

• Schematic
• Datasheet (IF-D96F)
• Datasheet (IF-E97)
• Hookup Guide
• Eagle Files
• GitHub Repo