How to set a Board info at compatible board

Projects Programming
1

Hi,
This is my first post.

I made original Arduino compatible board using FT232RL for USB serial.
Now, Board info indicates at Arduino IDE as follows:

BN: Unknown board
VID: 0403
PID: 6001
SN: Upload any sketch to obtain it

I would like to indicate an original board name and serial number like this:

BN: Hogeduino
VID: 0403
PID: 6001
SN: 2018050101

If I write BN and SN data to EEPROM, Can Arduino IDE read out?
What should I do? Please let me know related topic if you know.

Thank you.

2

AFAIK, get board info will only ever show custom info if the serial adapter isn't a generic one. I think if it uses an off the shelf serial adapter (like FT232RL, CH340G, CP2102, etc), it will always show as unknown board - only ones with native USB or the 16u2 as serial adapter (genuine and faithful clone uno/mega) will display custom data there.

3

Thanks DrAzzy,
Hmm. I don't have Arduino Duemilanove that has FT232RL, it will display Unknown board...
Anyway, I give up on that.

4

The "BN" field is just populated by the name value in boards.txt for the board that has the matching vid.n and pid.n values. The problem with doing that for VID: 0403/PID: 6001 is that you would make any device (including things that aren't even Arduino boards) using an FTDI FT232 appear as Hogeduino. Actually I believe that VID/PID pair is also shared by FTDI FT245, VNC1L, VNC2. So I think that would lead to more trouble than it's worth. That will also require users to install a custom hardware package, which probably would not be necessary otherwise if your board is compatible with an existing board definition. The best way to go about this would be to get a custom PID from FTDI for your boards:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Knowledgebase/caniuseftdisvidformypr.htm
They claim "There is no charge for this service to bona-fide FTDI customers."

Then you can use the "FT_prog" utility provided by FTDI to change the PID on your FT232 accordingly. After that, you'll need to provide a custom driver with your boards. I believe it's pretty easy to modify the standard driver for your PID.

As for the serial number, I'm not sure if there's a way to fill that from an FTDI chip. You'd have to mess around with FT_prog and maybe have a look at the source code for the IDE.

I actually did create a hardware package that assigns name values for the standard PID/VID pairs of the USB chips commonly used on Arduino boards:

but my package uses the chip names as name values to make it easier to identify ports in the Arduino IDE. So that's a different story from assigning a custom name value to a standard VID/PID.

5

Thank you pert, I understand.
I can't find any reasons to do the complicated procedure for my unsellable Hogeduino. But I need to understand about the VID/PID handling process for the future.