I've got an Arduino Nano clone, which I've so far been able to make work on several different pieces of code (including displaying text on an LCD display and hooking it up to a trimpot to display values on Serial monitor). If it matters, I've been using Arduino IDE on a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop running Windows 11. A slight oddity I've had to deal with so far is that I've almost always had to have both the Serial monitor open in order to get it to successfully upload code.
The last sketch I uploaded had the following code:
char TestMsg[]="Test message";
int sizeMsg = sizeof(TestMsg);
void setup() {
Serial.begin(19200);
}
void loop(){
for(int i=0; i<sizeMsg; i++){
Serial.print(TestMsg[i]);
}
Serial.println(" ");
delay(500);
}
It worked about once or twice while connected to the Serial monitor, but after that, the board was unable to hook up to the Serial monitor. Here's what I've tried:
- Connecting the board to either one of the computer's two USB ports (which show up as COM5 and COM6)
- Uninstalling the device from Device Manager, then uninstalling the CH340 driver, and reinstalling it
- Modifying the baud rate for the CH340 driver from 9600 bps to 19200 bps
- Trying to upload a blank sketch, and repeating steps 1-3
- Trying to upload a blank sketch with the reset button held pressed down
- Same as no. 5, but with the reset button released just as soon as "Uploading" appears on screen
- Same as no. 5, but with the Serial monitor closed
- Clicking on "Burn bootloader" and then going through each one of the programmers, testing with both the Serial monitor closed and open.
So far, the only difference I've noticed between leaving the Serial monitor tab open and closing it is that it takes longer for the upload/bootloader error to pop up if the Serial monitor is open.
The only thing I can tell about the Arduino itself is that the TX LED is still blinking, which indicates to me that it's still "transmitting" the test message.
Here's the upload error message for the blank sketch, in case anyone's interested:
Sketch uses 444 bytes (1%) of program storage space. Maximum is 30720 bytes.
Global variables use 9 bytes (0%) of dynamic memory, leaving 2039 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 2048 bytes.
"C:\Users\spepsus\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\tools\avrdude\6.3.0-arduino17/bin/avrdude" "-CC:\Users\spepsus\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\tools\avrdude\6.3.0-arduino17/etc/avrdude.conf" -v -V -patmega328p -carduino "-PCOM5" -b57600 -D "-Uflash:w:C:\Users\spepsus\AppData\Local\arduino\sketches\5DDB10730713322A8B847611E649B867/sketch_feb27a.ino.hex:i"
avrdude: Version 6.3-20190619
Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Joerg Wunsch
System wide configuration file is "C:\Users\spepsus\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\tools\avrdude\6.3.0-arduino17/etc/avrdude.conf"
Using Port : COM5
Using Programmer : arduino
Overriding Baud Rate : 57600
avrdude: ser_open(): can't set com-state for "\\.\COM5"
avrdude done. Thank you.
Failed uploading: uploading error: exit status 1
It is possible you will instead see the message "The best drivers are already installed". If so, please stop following the instructions here and reply on the forum thread to let me know. I'll provide alternative instructions you can follow.