Connection with Raspberry Pi 2

[TJ56]

Hello,

I purchased the Raspberry Pi 2 as well as the iRobot Create 2. The iRobot comes with a mini-DIN-to-USB cable. One end of the cable, the mini-DIN, would clearly go to the serial port on the iRobot. My initial impression was to connect the other end of the cable, the USB, directly to a Raspberry Pi USB port. However, upon reading the (iRobot) Raspberry Pi tutorial (http://www.irobot.com/~/media/MainSite/PDFs/About/STEM/Create/RaspberryPi_Tutorial.pdf), it tells in step (e) that a 5V to 3.3V level converter. is needed to make this connection. What am I supposed to connect the USB to then? Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[Joshua Pritt]

It looks like they want you to cut the USB plug off and connect the wires directly to the serial pins on the Pi's GPIO header. In order to do serial over USB with Linux takes a whole bunch of extra software steps that I never got to work correctly with my RFID reader project. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is what they are trying to do. I always get scared when asked to chop up the cables that came with my robot.
For my create robot project I bought a USB to serial converter single that plugs into USB then has a 9 pin serial port on the other. I'm using windows laptop so I'm not sure if it works in Linux.