I created a program in Visual C++ that has some buttons and when you push any of them, they send a character through serial to the arduino. The arduino reads those characters and turns on the corresponding LED. My question is do you need to have the arduino driver installed on your computer for this to work. Hypothetically, I bring my arduino to my friends and plug it into his computer and run my VC++ program, will it work? or does it need to have the arduino driver installed. I know its sounds simple, (Just install the driver) but I am just curious as to if it will work or not.
The FTDI driver needs to be installed in order for the serial port to Arduino communication to work.
However, windows is pretty good at recognizing the devices plugged in, and running, or installing, the correct drivers as required.
From: http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Windows
- Windows Vista should already have compatible driver.
- For XP / Seven / ect. you must install the driver manually.
- To get Arduino work under Linux, you will need to install some programs (depending on certain distribution)
You should carry arduino's driver on your usb memory stick as most computers have Windows XP or 7 (at least most of my friend have).