ESP8266 Community Forum

Is there a way to power and communicate with an FT232 based USB device connected to the USB port of an ESP8266 board ? I would like to bring a FT232 based device to the WiFi using an ESP8266 board.

This should be possible I guess since the FW upload uses FT232 boards as well but I can't find anything in the SDK.

The USB port on ESP8266 does not support USB host mode so plugging in a USB device will not work. It is possible to connect a board with a USB host port but this is for advanced users. The mini board should be used because it works at 3.3V logic levels.

https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0

To be more precies: the ESP8266 doesn't even have USB port(s).

It only has a collection of I/O pins, where some of these pins can be configured for RS232 (these are enabled at boot to be able to flash or debug an ESP), I2C and SPI.

Some development boards, however, do have a USB port on them, but this port directly connects to a USB to RS232 convertor which in turn is connected to the RS232-pins of the ESP.
Since it's a development-board, this add-on make development much more easy (hence the name "Development board").