Problem connecting to Arduino Uno

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hi Everyone

I'm trying to build a radio telemetry system to allow me to view the output from a water flow meter remotely on a farm. It's part of a farm waste management system that I'm developing.

All the gear I'm using is the brand Duinotech, which is sold by a local electronics retailer in Australia.

I'm doing this with 2 x arduino uno's (duinotech), 2 x duinotech – RF Transciever (uses nRF905 chips) and a LCD display.

The specific problem I have is that one of my uno boards connects fine to my computer (using the latest version of IDE); while the other does not connect. When I plug it in, the lights come on on the board, but there is no sound that comes from the computer indicating it has connected. The serial port is greyed out in IDE and I cannot select a port etc.

I have done a fair bit of sleuthing to try and fix this without bothering you all, but cannot fix the problem. Lots of people talk about drivers etc. but I cannot even connect to the board to install a driver.

I have connected this problem board to a different laptop, and the board connects to that computer OK - but not to my normal machine.

In looking through the preferences.txt document for Arduino IDE, I can see that COM port 3 is specified always within IDE. I tried changing it to COMx, but that didn't fix anything (I couldn't even connect to my normal uno).

In the device manager it shows 1 Uno in com port 3. I think this one is the 1st uno which works. I have uninstalled this device and plugged in the problem uno and nothing happens. It doesn't show a device at all, and doesn't even show the "ports" category in the device manager. once the 1st device is uninstalled.

I've tried updating drivers, but that doesn't seem to work. I think I can't update the drivers to this uno as my computer isn't even connecting to it.

I just tried to use the cloud based version of IDE, but that doesn't connect either.

I'm using Windows 10, on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3.

Any help you could give would be much appreciated :slight_smile: I'm very new to this, so I'm sorry to hassle you all.

2

On the working computer system, did you use the same USB cable?

Are you connecting the Uno to a USB 3 port on the computer?

Do both Unos use the same type of USB to TTL serial adapter chip? This is the larger black chip right near the USB jack on the board. It should say either MEGA16U2 or CH340.

3

Thanks for your reply.

Yes - using same cord for both.

Yes - connecting the uno to a usb 3 port on both machines.

Yes - both boards have the same USB to TTL serial adapter chip - they both have MEGA16U2 chips.

4

The only thing I can think of is that maybe you didn't completely plug the USB cable into either your Arduino board or the USB port on the computer.