Surprisingly, it turned out to be a piece of cake, although I never addressed the decoupling question, but I haven't had any problems yet.
I just got one of the basic
FTDI boards from eBay, cut up an old ethernet cable, and soldered on the appropriate wires to the appropriate PCB connections, and mounted it all in two milk bottle lids hot-glued together (see picture).
This was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement while I build a wifi version, but it's been working so well, I haven't even bothered with the wifi one, even though I purchased all the parts.
Not bad for a $3 build
