Arduino board install problems

Arduino board is darn close to plug and play. However, there are many arduino compatible boards that come with different USB chips, making the play part just a bit further away from the plug part. So, if you have got your new arduino (or compatible), how do you install the USB chip driver? The following are the steps to identify what driver you need, where to find them, and how to install them.

There are several USB chips different Arduino compatible boards use. An incomplete list of them is supplied at the end of the post.

First of all, if you have good eye sights, you should locate the USB chip on your arduino, which is usually near the USB socket, read its markings. Then find the driver from the list at the end of the post.

On Linux, many of these drivers are included in the distribution so you don’t notice anything except that you now have a new serial port, such as TTYUSB0. On windows, however, you need more work to get the driver installed.

If you are using windows, and you can’t determine (markings too faint) what chip set you have, do the following after plugging in your arduino board:

Go to device manager and find the device with an exclamation mark under “Other devices” as an “Unknown device” (mine actually is already recognized as COM47, yeah, lots of Arduinos).

Select properties and view the Details tab. Select under Property “Hardware Ids”. Look at the value.

Mine has VID=0403 and PID=6001. It is the FTDI FT232RL. This tells me that I would need the FTDI driver in case the driver is not already installed.

Install the correct driver, remove the arduino, reinsert it and wait for the driver to properly associate with the board. In case that didn’t happen automatically, you want to then right click the unknown device and update driver, then choose “browse my computer”. Then point to the right driver location. This step is necessary for all ATMEGAXXuX chips. The driver is in Arduino IDE under Drivers folder.

The following is a working list of chips, VID, PID and download links. I don’t guarantee the links are current or virus free but I did post official links.