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How to Connect 3V Serial to 5V

If you have an electronic circuit that is powered with a 5-volt power supply and another powered with 3 volts, you will need to convert the voltage levels of the input and outputs of these circuits. Digital circuits powered by 5-volt supplies won't be able to reliably read electronic data signals from 3-volt devices. You can easily overcome this problem with a level translator chip. These chips can be directly connected between the 3-volt digital serial output lines of a 3-volt chip and the serial input lines of a 5-volt chip.

Breadboard
MAX3370 serial level translator
Wire jumpers

Instructions

- 1
  Insert a 3-volt-to-5-volt voltage translator in the electronic breadboard that contains your 3-volt digital circuit and your 5-volt digital circuit. Insert the MAX3370 level translator for this example.
- 2
  Connect the MAX3370's "VL" pin (pin 1) to the breadboard's 3-volt power bus.
- 3
  Connect the MAX3370's "VCC" pin (pin 6) to the breadboard's 5-volt power bus.
- 4
  Connect the MAX3370's "ground" pin (pin 2) to the breadboard's ground bus.
- 5
  Connect the MAX3370's low-voltage "I/0 VL" pin (pin 3) to the serial data output pin on your 3-volt digital circuit.
- 6
  Connect the MAX3370's high-voltage "I/0 VCC" pin (pin 4) to the input signal pin on your 5-volt digital circuit.

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