(Solved) I've tried installing on 2 diffeeent laptops. One laptop you can see COM1 but it won't communicate with the board and the other laptop Arduino can't see any com ports at all.
So I've tried version 1.6.5 and the latest version of Arduino.
I'm using FTDI232RL USB to serial converter.
Trying to flash a Micro Minim OSD.
I've checked all wiring and I have it correct.
I'm choosing the correct board in Arduino.
I have tried running Arduino in comparability mode (all from win95 to current) and tried running as administrator and not.
I'm out of options. Either something is wrong and I'm too inexperienced to see it or the FTDI board which is brand new from Banggood is no good.
Also I had a second brand new FTDI and MicronMinimOSD boards. I have them to a friend who was also unable to get them to work. So that's 3 laptops, 2 FTDI boards and 2 units to be flashed.
Please help I'm all out of ideas.
Com 1 is almost NEVER an option for an Arduino on windows platforms.
Avoid USB 3.0 ports wherever possible with Arduinos.
You may have to get the latest FTDI drivers to make them work properly. (had to do that for two of my boards that have a real FTDI)
Make sure (on windows at least) that it did not do an update regarding USB as there was one a while ago that had issues. ( A search of the forum should point you in the right direction )
I know nothing about the minim board so probably best you look to thier forum / help pages for that.
Another good option is to run the IDE portable from an unzipped copy of the IDE which seems to help some people.
Solved.
So the FTDI232RL I had bought from Banggood. I've got things from there faulty before so I went to a local electronics store today and bought a Deek-Robot FTDI. It came with its own cable.
It turned out to be a cable issue. The 2 USB cables I have here work fine for every other purpose. But when plugging in the FTDI's no sound and no change to com ports.
Using the USB cable that came with the Deek-Robot FTDI when you plug it in straight away windows chimes that it has recognized a USB device.
I fired up Arduino IDE and it now sees COM1 and COM6. So I changed to COM6 and bam world perfect. Flashed my micro miniosd without an issue.
All that hair pulling over a cable. I know I had a micro USB cable that acted similar and I was told that some micro USB cables only provide power not data. The problem is there is no marking on the cable to identify it as power only or data also so you have no idea what's going on. Looks like that's the same case for these mini USB cables.
