Ever since the April update we cannot get our 3rd party Nano boards to work in the Chrome Arduino editor. Yes we have the Arduino Create extension and have tried the app as well as the web editor. Serial USB permission is allowed.
This sure looks like anticompetitive behavior in order to suck money out of cash strapped schools who are buying clone boards. All Nano boards should be supported not just the "genuine" (open source) Arduino Nano 33 IoT.
Hi @anon28892466.
Cloud Editor only supports uploading to the following list of boards (as well as 3rd party compatibles and derivatives of the boards on that list) from ChromeOS machines:
"Verify Only" support is provided for many other boards. When you have one of those boards selected, you can still use Cloud Editor to develop sketches, and compile the sketches for the selected board. Unfortunately, due to the unique technical challenges imposed by the ChromeOS environment, we have not been able to provide upload support for those boards so upload button will be disabled when one of the "Verify Only" boards is selected.
I can offer a few possible solutions/workarounds for this problem:
The Arduino Nano board is not one of the boards with upload support. If you want to upload to this board (or its 3rd party clones and derivatives) using Arduino Cloud, you would need to use a Linux, macOS, or Windows machine instead of ChromeOS.
An alternative would be to get one of the supported boards. You can support the work Arduino does to provide free open source software, documentation, and hardware designs to the community by purchasing official hardware. It is available from these sources:
The hardware of the Nano is essentially functionally identical to the hardware of the UNO R3, just in a different form factor. This means that if we select the "Arduino Uno" board from the "Unknown Device Found" dialog in Cloud Editor, it is possible to compile and upload to Nano boards without any problems at all (in fact, I have been doing this with all my Nano boards for the last decade and quite a few other community members do the same).
There is one complication: A program called a "bootloader" is stored in a special area of memory in the Nano board's microcontroller. This program handles the receipt of the compiled sketch data from the computer over the serial port during an upload, and flashing that data to the microcontroller's memory. Prior to 2018, the Nano boards manufactured by Arduino used a different bootloader than the bootloader on the UNO R3. Arduino switched to using the same bootloader as the UNO R3 on the official Nano in 2018 but some of the manufacturers of cheap Chinese derivative boards never bothered to make the change and so many of the derivative "Nano" boards still ship with the "old" bootloader even now 6 years later. It is only possible to upload to the Nano boards with the "new" bootloader while the UNO R3 board is selected in Cloud Editor.
You can determine which bootloader is present on your boards by connecting the board to the computer with a USB cable and then pressing and releasing the reset button on the board. If the "L" LED on the board blinks several times quickly then the board has the "new" bootloader then you are all set and you can simply select the "Arduino Uno" board from the "Unknown Device Found" dialog in Cloud Editor. If the LED only blinks once then the board has the "old" bootloader and it would be necessary to update the bootloader on the board. Doing so actually provides several additional benefits (which are the reason why I use my Nano boards as an Uno):
An overview of the bootloader update procedure:
If you don't have a dedicated ISP programmer (e.g., USBasp), you can easily make a DIY ISP programmer from one of the Nano boards (or most other Arduino boards):
https://docs.arduino.cc/built-in-examples/arduino-isp/ArduinoISP/
If you are interested in giving this a try and have any questions or problems, just let us know and we'll try to provide support.
You are welcome to provide details about the problem you had when using the app.
Unfortunately I'm not able to help with app problems since I am not involved in the development or support of that product, and don't have any experience with using it due to lack of access to a ChromeOS machine. However, one of the other Arduino Team members who is involved in the app project, or one of the forum helpers might be able to assist you in that area.
I think that making such accusations is counterproductive. Let's focus our attention on technical facts and solutions instead of tiresome conspiracy theories. If you really want to discuss your conspiracy theory, then please make a new forum topic for that.
Note that the lack of support for uploading to the Nano from ChromeOS machines is not a matter of Arduino excluding 3rd party boards. The official Arduino Nano is unsupported just the same as the 3rd party boards.
In fact, the Arduino Cloud developers recently did quite a lot of work just to restore support for 3rd party derivatives of the supported boards. Those 3rd boards directly compete with Arduino's own hardware products and many of the manufacturers of those products don't contribute in any way to the work on Arduino's open source software on which their products rely. Despite this, Arduino has gone to great lengths to make our open source software products support 3rd party hardware.
how very great!!!
it is working again!
now able to connect and upload to arduino uno on a chromebook!
i am sure every (young) user is very satisfied!
one thing, i use Beagle Term for the serial monitor and that works too!!
great work for the team!!
my humble compliments!!