10pcs Mini RS232 to TTL MAX3232 to TTL Level Converter Board Serial Converter Board RS232 to TTL Serial

No issues with heat. I used 3.3V to power the board. George did a good job in the photo section above and it is spot on. My use case was a little different as what I needed was to tap into a RS232 working line and probe it with a logic analyzer. So, it was two RS232 > TTL lines; one on each side of the board. This let me probe both the TX and RX at the same time. I used AI to help me write a program to read the MODBUS output of a MPPT controller. This little board worked great and I learned a lot. Worth the $.

Works fine. I was a little leery after reading some reviews, but read enough of them to avoid the potential issues. I'm using it to add 2 serial ports to a Raspberry Pi. Things to keep in mind: 1) There are TWO converters, one on each face of the board. There's not enough room on the chip side to label which end is TTL and which is RS232 (did I mention it's tiny?), but it matches the other side which is clearly labeled. 2) If you're not using the second converter, don't leave the input floating or it'll overheat. See other reviews for how to add a pullup resistor. 3) I had no trouble attaching flexible 28 gauge wire to the small solder pads. I could see if you tried attaching larger or solid wire, or a component directly, it could be dicey. 4) Some reviewers complained about mounting it, but it's easy if you attach all 8 wires first. Then connect power using the through-holes (I snipped leads from diodes for this), so the whole thing is suspended over your main PCB. I added a 3rd lead to the other side to secure it better. So don't let the other reviews scare you. It works, and good luck finding anything more compact or cheaper.

If you are payed 20$ an hour and time is money save yourself 100$ by buying something else. The chip works (that is the reason for the second star) but to use it I had to spend 5 hours soldering. The data pins do not have holes and if you solder anything to the metal straps they come off at the slightest pressure. And I do not mean that what you have soldered comes off. The metal strip from the board comes off making the board unusable. Finally I came up with a design that holds and works.. The other think is how much power those chips take. When I connect it it dims the lid and they become pretty hot. I doubt they can be used for a project that runs 24 hours.... In other words save yourself some time, keep your blood pressure down and buy something else.

These boards are usable, but are somewhat difficult to work with. The documentation is non-existent except for what people have figured out in Amazon reviews. It makes about +/-6V on the RS232 side unloaded. I highly recommend working under magnification when soldering, and being very careful not to detach the pads.

This was very amateur construction, soldering to a pad causes the internal connection to the pad to separate and the pad to separate from the board. Even the bare minimum solder temperature causes failure. JUNK.

At first, I thought they had only shipped me one board because it was in a single small bag, but the boards are just barely larger than the MAX232 chip, so there *were* 10 of them. These things are minimal -- no header pins or wires, but they have the caps that make them work so you don't have to design a board. I'm powering one with 3.3v, and that seems to work. I wasn't sure it would, but so far, so good.

As the title states, the device (MAX3232ESE) used in the circuit requires the V+ pin's capacitor to be wired into the VCC of the circuit to prevent an overheating condition in the integrated circuit. In the current capacitor placement, it gets very hot. Furthermore, the device requires the attachment of leads to the surface pads for attaching signals to application which complicates one's assembly processes. I found myself putting in the same amount of work as if I'd had to research an IC and integrate it into my application. I think I would have appreciated a properly documented circuit with through-hole breakouts for each of the signals that I could more easily place into a test board/breadboard application. I still give this three stars, because now that I know what to do to get this to work, the value of receiving 10 RS232 ICs for 5 bucks is....acceptable. If the HILETGO people designed a device that had through-hole access to it's signals and could be more readily placed into test boards or breadboards and provided good pinout and Input/Output documentation, then I would certainly buy those. I hope that they see this as constructive criticism and improve this circuit.

These work well and do not heat up, however, there is a key point that the seller needs to emphasize - these devices provide *two* RS232 (TX, RX) pairs. Each pair is on one side of the PCB - this is the reason for the pads without holes. The other users that talk about drilling through those pads are shorting two different channels and make the channel drivers fight each other, resulting in higher heat dissipation. Note to seller - personally, I would have preferred if the TX/RX pairs used four through-hole pads on each side and the connections to GND and Vcc were on the bottom as pads you solder to. Or, even better, one can extend the PCB by 2.54mm and have two more through-hole pads.

a little fiderly to conect up, work well have used several.