[Solved] Clone arduino Mega 2560 - no serial port DCcduino Mega 2560

Hi guys... i really need help, i'm struggling with this... i bought arduino nano clone from e-bay and FTDI chip is CH340G. I cannot install drivers on my computer, i tried everything but still it says error code 10. I tried to disable driver enforsment, i tried 3 different drivers nothing... sometimes it installs drivers and asks me to restart my computer and i restart it and nothing.. sometimes it wont even install it, always says eroor code 10 "Device wont start" or something like that, if someone please could help me pleeeaseee :frowning: i used this guys tutorial and drivers that are in the description.

P.S. sorry for bad english i'm from Europe

Hi guys... i really need help, i'm struggling with this... i bought arduino nano clone from e-bay and FTDI chip is CH340G. I cannot install drivers on my computer, i tried everything but still it says error code 10. I tried to disable driver enforsment, i tried 3 different drivers nothing... sometimes it installs drivers and asks me to restart my computer and i restart it and nothing.. sometimes it wont even install it, always says eroor code 10 "Device wont start" or something like that, if someone please could help me pleeeaseee :frowning: i used this guys tutorial and drivers that are in the description.

P.S. sorry for bad english i'm from Europe

You may have noticed that your Nano is not in fact a Mega 2560.

You need to load the CH340 drivers. They are available here.

milky3645, you should start your own thread. You'll get a lot more help that way, help relevant to your problem.

evanhu:
Thank you so much! dmatyukhin

I just got several cheap DCcduino boards from China and it works on my mac.

Just to summarise. On Yosemite:

  1. Install the driver http://www.wch.cn/downloads.php?name=pro&proid=178

  2. Run this(Terminal):

Code: [Select]

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

  1. Restart

This is a perfect summary of what everyone else is saying, but for some reason its just not playing properly on my system.

i have a netbook with xp on it, have installed the ch340 drivers, and all is good, but on my yosemite machine 10.10.2 the system is just plain refusing to acknowledge the drivers. i can see the unit on the system information tab, so it has power (plus the lights shine and all)...

i think the only difference is that my 340g is a separate board plugged into my 'duino.

andyough:
Actually, I was too quick assigning blame. It was nothing to do with the USB-serial at all, and everything to do with the capacitor on the Arduino power supply. (presumably a large current surge when plugging-in caused a rather serious problem. But it shouldn't crash the Mac surely?)

Hi. What was your fix for this problem?

Dizzwold.

dizzwold:
Hi. What was your fix for this problem.

The fix for my problem was to remove the capacitor from the power supply pins.

(I should stress that this was an external capacitor to try to mask a problem with HF noise on a 5V PSU.)

Hi,

So this was not a cap on the Arduino?

Every time i plug this 'Arduino clone, with the win chip head', it crashes my imac?

I previously wrote, that having an external power source solved the problem, but it doesn't.

Any thoughts?

Dizzwold.

I have no good suggestions.
You could try hibernating the iMac, then plugging in the Arduino, then waking it back up again. That might at least prevent uncontrolled shut-downs.

As I said, no good suggestions.

I gave the manufacturer a call just now. They are dealing with this problem now but Apple did not reply them.(For signature). But they reply me an email about a solution. In the email they said a website CodeBender.cc has resolved this problem and don't need to reboot.

https://codebender.cc/

It seems like a web browser based IDE but I will test it tomorrow.

It really works on https://codebender.cc/. I am using Mac Yosemite 10.10.2 and DCcEle Dccduino UNO. It works fine in codebender's web IDE.

The driver seems cant work out of CodeBender.

markyin:
It really works on https://codebender.cc/. I am using Mac Yosemite 10.10.2 and DCcEle Dccduino UNO. It works fine in codebender's web IDE.

The driver seems cant work out of CodeBender.

Did you previously install the manufacturer's drivers ( ie ch340 driver?), then installed codebender drivers, and then codebender uploaded successfully the test project?
If not, what did you do? I have yet to find a way to program a cloned arduino nano without my mac's touchpad freezing or erratically stopping communication with the arduino.

markyin:
I gave the manufacturer a call just now. They are dealing with this problem now but Apple did not reply them.(For signature). But they reply me an email about a solution. In the email they said a website CodeBender.cc has resolved this problem and don't need to reboot.

https://codebender.cc/

It seems like a web browser based IDE but I will test it tomorrow.

Thank you soooo much markyin!

I know it's an old thread but apparently people are still reading this.
For everyone still struggling after hours installing drivers and stuff -> codebender somehow did all the work for me!
I have no idea how but somehow they got my china 340 up and running on OSX Yosemite El Capitan beta (OSX 10.11)
I'm really doing my best with my english skills :wink:

I don't even need codebender anymore, all of a sudden Arduino 1.6.5 recognized my Board as "/dev/cu./wchusbserial410" Yeah!

I'm a real newbie to all this, so when I purchased some nano clones I also read the comments stating that additional drivers were required.

My very sincere thanks to rich1812 and HandsOn and their conversation of 2014 and sourcing the way through. I installed the drivers for the CH340 from the link given and presto, after a re-boot the new comms port was there (along with a warning re the software etc). It worked first time, great work.

[I'm only using the cheap boards to flash LEDs on model buoys, nothing complicated at all, but the sequences have to be spot on with timings. I wanted to enable each as an individual, I've already managed to run them all from one Mega unit but that entailed lots of wires. At £4 per nano board it is possible for each buoy (13 in a set) to have its own unit.]

Reading on through this thread it appears that more people are using this to solve the clone programming. I'm on a mac with OS X 10.9.5 so thanks for the heads up on the latest Mac ops systems (Yosemite etc). I will encounter them soon.

A quick question - how stable are these clone boards and what user life is expected?

Aye, Kim. [Isle of Man]

Hi all!

I am using osx 10.10.2 and have a custom board with atmega256 on it. I have burnt the arduino bootloader onto the chip. Attempting to program it through PL2303 USB to UART converter.

I have had problems doing so, avrdude says problem communicating with programmer etc. etc. as everyone has experienced.

I was able to program the chip nicely using the codebender.cc site (thanks very much for the suggestion!)

I noticed that I was able to program the chip once using the Arduino IDE, but then never again, which lead me to the following.

I think I may have found the problem though: When I enabled verbose output from avrdude for uploading, I noticed that the received data would not be the expected data from the bootloader, but it would read in data that the previous code was printing to the serial port. This would confuse avrdude.

What I then did was use codebender to upload a blank sketch (without any Serial.print() ). I was then able to program the atmega256 using the PL2303 chipset USB to USART converter.

While not ideal, this will allow the use of the arduino ide to be used

Hi Imbatronics

I got two of these CH346g MEGA2560s off eBay recently. I am not on Mac but I think something similar to what you suggest. Windows7 has problems with these devices, as does my KALI Linux and Windows XP. But suprisingly the 1.01 Arduino IDE on Raspberry Pi 2 recognised as a /dev/ttyUSBn. However, attempts to load code resulting in the sync from avr_dude.

Anyhow, after finding this thread, and some more digging, I found I could use my 1280 to check and program a boatloader for these chips.

See http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=11635 for Nick's brilliant programs.

git clone onto your box
Run his "fixup" shell script
Wire up the 6 pin ICSP, recalling to put pin 5 on target ICSP to pin 10 on the mega1280.
Run his boot verification
Complete rubbish on the chip.

Load his bootloader onto it (this verifies the bootloader). And then one can load a sketch onto the Mega 2560 using IDE and it works!!!

But, and I think this is related to your observations, only once!
Try to load another program and it fails with the sync.

I reattached to the 1280 and used Nick's program to verify. Bootloader is good!
But wont sync.

Reloading the 2560 will work again -- then stop.

So I have a potential workaround.

1 - keep the 1280 as the "rescue me" for the 2560s
2 - develop my code on the 1280 until I am ready to commit
3 - using the rescued 2560, load the 1280 code onto it - hoping it loads first time.

goto 1 if I want to load another sketch on it.

I have written to the eBay folks I bought it from. Depending on their answer (and more research based on your hints) either I will get it to work better, or accept my workaround, learn that cheap is not always best, given them a poor survey, expect the rant this will entail, and move on -- RPi is probably where I want to be anyhow,

Regards
Steve H

OMG..Thanks You guys saved my arss..I am up and running with cheap ATMEGA2560...

Had this issue and saw the download link for the CH341SER.exe was gone. Here they are at waybackmachine if anyone needs them CH341SER.EXE

Hi,
This is an old thread, but for those like me that are not keen on installing Russian, Chinese driver (or any driver not from a reputable source for that matter) I have an alternate solution I stumbled across today.

I use a USB isolator I use to protect my PC when I am working with high-voltages on the Arduino. It prevents accidentally damaging your PC through high-voltages injected into the USB port.

I discovered today that putting the USB isolator in line with communicating with the Mega 2560 worked without the need for the CH346G driver.

My isolator is based on the Analog Devices iCoupler Technology ADuM4160. You can pick them up for about $10 on eBay.