The internally generated clock (6MHz, 12MHz, 24MHz, and 48MHz) can be brought out of the device and used to drive a microcontroller or external logic. The FT232R adds two new functions compared with its predecessors, effectively making it a '3-in-1' chip for some application areas. When connected to a PC FT232RL is mounted and shows as Virtual COM port in Device Manager making it easy to send and receive data from PIC, AVR or ATMEGA microcontrollers. Up to 500mA of +5V power can be obtained from USB port and used to power both FT232RL chip and your favourite MCU. FT232RL chip provides two data lines RXD and TXD that are connected through 1K resistors to a microcontroller such as PIC AVR ATMEGA ARDUINO. FT232RL is an impressive chip because it implements full v2.0 USB protocol, needs no external crystal, has integrated EEPROM for device ID and product description strings and comes with Royalty-Free driver support for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.

FT232RL USB to Serial UART (TTL) Adapter is a simple and inexpensive way to connect PIC, AVR or ATMEGA MCUs to a PC or Mac via USB connection.

Ft232r usb uart driver