Description from the supplier
This is a basic breakout board for the FTDI FT232RL USB to serial IC. The pinout of this board matches the FTDI cable to work with official for Arduino and cloned 5V for Arduino boards. It can also be used for general serial applications. The major difference with this board is that it brings out the DTR pin as opposed to the RTS pin of the FTDI cable. The DTR pin allows an for Arduino target to auto-reset when a new Sketch is downloaded. This is a really nice feature to have and allows a sketch to be downloaded without having to hit the reset button. This board will auto reset any for Arduino board that has the reset pin brought out to a 6-pin connector.
This board has TX and RX LEDs that make it a bit better to use over the FTDI cable. You can actually see serial traffic on the LEDs to verify if the board is working.
This board was designed to decrease the cost of Arduino development and increase ease of use (the auto-reset feature rocks!). Our Arduino Pro boards and LilyPads use this type of connector.
One of the nice features of this board is a jumper on the back of the board that allows the board to be configured to either 3.3V or 5V (both power output and IO level). This board ship default to 5V, but you can cut the default trace and add a solder jumper if you need to switch to 3.3V.
Size: 4.3*1.7*1cm
USB Cable Length: 33cm
Supply voltage
The module uses the USB 5V supply. The FT232 chip has a 3V3 output, that can be used to control the voltage of the data connections. The switch on the module switches the data lines between 5V and 3V3, but NOT the VCC output on the 6pin socket!
To be used, we need to cut a trace or do not connect the VCC pin between the FDTI module and the Arduino.