Trying to program Pro Mini with FTDI USB-TTL, no port shows in Linux Arduino IDE

Using Arduino IDE 1.x
1

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04.
To program a Pro Mini I have an FTDI USB-TTL adapter.
When I insert it, and start Arduino IDE 1.6.12, the Port menu item is greyed out.

Using "lsusb" before and after inserting the USB-TTL adapter, I found out the vendor and product id:
$ lsusb
...
Bus 001 Device 010: ID 6881:6001
...

I then created an udev rule:
$ sudoedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-arduino.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", ATTRS{idVendor}=="6881", SYMLINK+="ttyACM%n"

$ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
$ sudo udevadm trigger
(and also rebooted in the end, just to be sure)

Details of the brand new ttyACM1 port:
$ ls -l /dev/ttyACM*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 okt 28 13:46 /dev/ttyACM1 -> bus/usb/001/002

The Arduino IDE still shows a grey Port menu item :frowning:

The port is owned by group "root".
When people describe this port problem, they have a port that's owned by the "dialout" group, and just adding the user to this group solves the problem.
I would then have to add myself to the root group, which isn't desirable.

Any clues how to fix this?

2

The following works for Linux Mint. I did not have to build udev rules.

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ftdi-drivers/all#linux

"Linux includes the drivers necessary to use Arduino, and no additional install is needed. However, permissions might need to be configured. For current instructions on how to set up these permissions, visit this page."

Serial port permissions

    now as normal user from terminal:
    ls -l /dev/ttyUSB* 

or
ls -l /dev/ttyACM*
you will get something like:
crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 5 apr 23.01 ttyUSB0
or
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 5 apr 23.01 ttyACM0
The "0" might be a different number, or multiple entries might be returned. In the first case the data we need is "uucp", in the second "dialout" (is the group owner of the file.

    Now we just need to add our user to the group:
    usermod -a -G group-name username 

where group-name is the data found before, and username is your linux user name. You will need to log out and in again for this change to take effect.
3

Before I added the udev rule, no port showed up with "ls -l /dev/ttyUSB*" or "ls -l /dev/ttyACM*".
With the udev rule in place ttyACM1 shows up, but owned by group root.

4

Try :

sudo arduino

And see if things work as root. If they do maybe we can find a way to get the serial port on the dialup group.
My ftdi (probably a counterfeit) has ID 0403:6001. I cannot find any information on ID 6881:6001.

5

Running "sudo ~/arduino/arduino" starts the IDE, but still has a greyed out Port menu item.
It's a cheapo adapter, so might have a counterfeit FT232RL.

6

If it was me, I would buy a cheap cp2102 module from ebay like this one for $ 1.35. They work great on Linux.

7

Ha, that's exactly what I did a few hours ago :slight_smile:
Let's see if that works better.

Thanks for the help!