Introduction When you first receive your development board you will want to plug it into your computer. What happens when your computer doesn't recognise it? You become annoyed, frustrated and confused. So what to do? It turns out that these boards have interface chips or Integrated Circuits (IC) that require drivers so that they can communicate to your computer. Chip Identification So how to identify the interface chip This is a CH340 IC that can be seen to have 16 pins and in a rectangular shape. Instructions for installing CH340/CH341 drivers. This is a CP2102 or CP2104 IC that is a square shape. Instructions for installing drivers for CP210x

Review of  ESP8266 NodeMCU Development Board V3. Introduction After ordering my package from ebay it arrived 14 days later which is quite good from China. It maybe different from where you are located. I opened the package to reveal that the condition was excellent. Condition Well packed with foam padding to protect the pins. Inside of a sealed Anti-static bag. Listing The listing on ebay indicated that it was a NodeMCU board one of the advantages of using this is that it is well supported. Lots of documentation, circuit diagrams, pinouts etc. Inspection Breadboard friendly: Yes when placed on a prototype board it leaves one pin free on either side of the dev board, however, there is no pin labeling on the top of the board which is mentioned in the sellers description. Close examination of the board revealed no errors and is a clean board. USB to UART chip used: CH340 LiPo Battery support: no Setup Installing the ESP8266 core instruc...

Review of HiLetgo® UNO R3 ATmega328P CH340 Development Board Introduction After ordering my package from Amazon.com.au it arrived 3 business days later. It maybe different from where you purchase the item. I opened the package to reveal that the condition was excellent. Condition Inside of a sealed Anti-static bag. Comes with additional male header pins and a USB A to USB B cable. Listing The listing on Amazon.com.au indicated that it was a Arduino UNO clone board, Meaning it uses an ATmega328P microcontroller chip.  It also has a CH340G USB to serial interface chip. Inspection Examination of the board revealed no errors and of good construction. Soldering was clean of any residue. This board uses a Surface Mount ATMEGA328P chip with a ch340T USB to Serial interface chip. It has extra pins that can be soldered on the board allowing additional functionality. USB to UART chip used: ch340t chip Installing CH340/ CH341 driver Instructions for ins...

Installing Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers. MAC Download here Unzip file Open up SiLabsUSBDriverDisk.dmg file Follow the prompts restart the computer Windows  Download  here Linux Download  here

Setup for using ESP32 development boards Installing the ESP32 Core Mac Open Terminal and execute the following command (copy->paste and hit enter): mkdir -p ~ /Documents/Arduino/hardware/espressif && \ cd ~ /Documents/Arduino/hardware/espressif && \ git clone https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32.git esp32 Once complete then with following copy->paste into terminal and hit enter cd esp32 && \ git submodule update --init --recursive && \ cd tools && \ python get.py If you get the error below. Install the command line dev tools with xcode-select --install and try the command above again: xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools), missing xcrun at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/xcrun xcode-select --install Restart Arduino IDE Windows Download and install the latest Arduino IDE  Windows Installer  from  arduino.cc Dow...

Installing CH340 / CH341 drivers for Arduino, ESP32 and ESP8266 boards. Introduction With the development of Arduino, ESP32 and ESP8266 boards there has been a requirement to communicate to these devices via USB. There are several of these components or Integrated Circuits (IC) available that are installed on development boards. In order to communicate to these boards with Arduino IDE or other IDEs there is a requirement to install specific drivers. Procedures Close Arduino IDE Mac Download and install drivers from here After installing the drivers the computer is required to be restarted for the drivers to function. To confirm drivers are working correctly connect device goto terminal type ls -l /dev/tty.* the device will be displayed in the list as shown in the Figure 1 Figure 1 - list of devices Caution OSX Sierra (10.12) users It has been reported the driver WILL crash on OSX Sierra. Make sure to use this one instead: ch340 v1.3 driver For fur...