In the previous part of the series we explored the embedded-hal traits and how they can be used to create platform agnostic drivers in Rust. In this part, we will focus on how we can use the FT232H breakout board to interact with our I2C device from a desktop environment.

An ordinary laptop or desktop computer does not have native I2C support, so we need to use a USB to I2C bridge to communicate with our device. The FT232H breakout board made by adafruit is a popular choice for this purpose, as it provides a simple and reliable way to interface with I2C devices from a computer. It also provides GPIO, SPI and has a STEMMA QT connector for easy wiring. Allowing us to chain a bunch of I2C devices together.

Writing drivers that work consistently across microcontrollers, embedded Linux boards, and desktop operating systems is deceptively hard. Different HALs, conflicting abstractions, and platform-specific quirks often lead to duplicated code or forests of #ifdef blocks.

In this blog series, we’ll explore how to design and implement a multi-platform Rust driver that avoids all of that — one codebase, many targets. We’ll look at how Rust’s trait system, strong type guarantees, built-in testing support, and CI-friendly workflow make this not only possible, but pleasant.