Board issues

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hi Folks,
It seems I have had a boards failure, or at least something to wrong with the way my mac is reading the ports. Any advice or help appreciated.
I bought a nano v.3 and an uno r3, cheap ones from China, DX to be precise, and it seems neither of them connect to my mac. Both boards power on and seem to light up and function, and the uno blinks the on board LED, but neither show up for me to set the port. I get the Bluetooth port but not Com1, and I cannot send sketchs to either board.
I have followed the online guide to set the port multiple times, swapped USB leads and USB ports, checked the original Duinotech uno (works fine) shows up the correct selected port. I have followed a guide to instal FDTI drivers to no avail. Other than turning it off and on again I don't really know what else to do,
Running the latest OS Sierra, with the latest arduino (1.6 I think), is this more likely to be a software issue or a (cheap) hardware issue?
Regards,

Cup

2

Almost all of the cheap Nano and Uno clones use the CH340 USB-serial chip, not FTDI. You can download the driver for it here: http://www.wch.cn/download/CH341SER_MAC_ZIP.html. After installing that the ports for the boards should show up.

I have been seeing a lot of Sierra related issues reported lately, I believe there have been some relating to the CH340 driver but I don't use Sierra so I can't say for sure. Definitely you should use the latest version of the Arduino IDE(1.6.12) as previous versions has some Sierra specific issues.

3

Well this just crashes my laptop if I plug any arduino board in.

http://www.wch.cn/download/CH341SER_MAC_ZIP.html. After installing that the ports for the boards should show up.

4

Sorry to hear that. I suspect it's the Sierra issue. See CH341SER_MAC No longer works in macOS Sierra - Installation & Troubleshooting - Arduino Forum for more information and a possible fix. That was just the first search result I found, there is probably much more information on this issue since I'm sure there are many others having it.

It might be worth checking that the boards do indeed use CH340. You can look at the chip near the USB jack(on the bottom of the board on the Nano) to see if it has CH340 written on it. Alternately, you could post a link to where you bought the boards and I should be able to identify the chip from the product photos.

5

Yep, they do use that chip,at least the R3 does, the Nano is too small for me to read. Also the Duinotech board does not crash my Mac, and is still recognised. So it seems that it is specific to that chip.
I will check out that link, also will use that to try and remove these drivers.

Thanks,

6

I have switched to wireless connections for my Mac, since it has built-in Bluetooth. Using a Pro Mini and an HC-05 module it is easier and cheaper than you may think. It gets tiresome plugging and unplugging USB cables all the time, and messing with drivers.

7

Hat is a good idea, certainly one I will look into. The world is going wireless, don't fight it.