HP JY728A TTL Serial to USB Female/Male Adapter Cord for Aruba AP-203H Remote Access Point

Was very easy, no drivers needed for Mac, plug in, few terminal commands and you can see console info. Used this cable to wipe and upgrade Aruba os and change my boxes from RW to US, very easy and reliable connection.

First and foremost, keep in mind that even with this you need something to power up the Aruba AP. This only provides the connection. So don't complain if it doesn't power up when you connect this. You need a power adapter or something to provide POE to the Aruba AP for it to turn on.Okay now to the review of the actual cable. This LOOKS like a normal Micro USB to USB cable. It's not. Those WILL NOT WORK to console the Aruba APs. There's a specific pin out being used in this proprietary cable to allow connectivity. I went thru a lot of cussing and aggravation before learning this fact. So, I hope this helps someone else down the line.Once connected and the AP is powered up you can use this like any other console cable. It shows up as a Serial port and you can use a terminal program (I used PuTTy) to connect in and view or make changes as needed.

The cable is great, especially if you own Aruba WAPs like the ap-345 that have the micro USB without proper voltage conversion, which is most of the newer ones, and unfortunately, this particular item for me was lost in transit. So the cable is great, I’m MacGyver-ed one out of other parts to set things up for a client but this particular cable is the better way to go long term.

The photo is wrong. This is the proprietary Aruba AP console cable. It looks like an orange USB-A to mini-USB cable, with a larger than normal USB-A end to hold the circuitry. It's about 1 meter long. It's actually a USB to 3.3v TTL serial converter (electrically similar to an FTDI Friend for Arduinos). The "micro-usb" end is electrically different from usb. When you plug it into a linux pc, it will show up as /dev/ttyUSB0, not special driver needed. Use 9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control, no carrier watch. I have only used this on an Aruba AP-515.

this is the only cable i could find that gets me console into my aruba 515s... works as expected.

It was odd that a new Managed switch did not come with the correct cable, but finding this little gem ensured that we were able to get it programmed and deployed quickly.

If you are dealing with the new HPE or Aruba gear, this is what works as you cannot use a standard USB cable with the same connectors on each end.

I bought this because it is the only cable that allows me to see the console output on Aruba AP-515 access points