Arduino has become quite costly where I come from (2/3 of the price of Raspberry PI) so I have created an Arduino Severino clone.
I had used the device with the RS-232 Usb-Serial converter. But after a (long) while, the device stopped working. My friend came up with a point that RS-232 communication ranges between +6 to -6 V (with thresholds at +3 and -3 volts).
So I have tried FT232 which uses 0 to 5 volts instead. I have a little Chinese FTDI chip designed to do that:
However, after connecting it, it behaves unexpectedly. (it had crashed my PC, one of the communication LEDs is on all the time...) I realised that the Arduino board might get broken for a different reason (an accidental short-circuit is very likely).
So for which type of communication is this "Arduino" designed?