Installing The CH340 driver On Windows 10,8 and 7

The Arduino uno comes in two types of versions, the through-hole version and the smd version of the Atmega328P. The Smd version uses a surface mount version of the Atmega328P. This version of the Arduino is cheap compared to the through-hole mount version. This version was made in response to a shortage in supply of the through-hole Atmega328P. The Uno differs from all preceding boards as it does not use the FTDI USB-to-serial driver chip. Instead, it features the Atmega8U2 programmed as a USB-to-serial converter. The functioning is similar to the through hole version. The smd version required a ch340 driver to be installed on the pc for the pc to recognise this boards.It does not come preinstalled with the ide.

The ch340 Ic is a low cost USB to TTL converter ic.It is used in Low cost SMD Arduino Uno And Arduino Nano Boards. Many USB to Serial converters are available but this is a low cost Ic. Even Node MCU IOT modules also have this IC.

Arduino Uno SMD version

Arduino Uno (Through-hole version)

Prerequisites

Install the Arduino Ide from the Arduino official website here. Also download the driver from google by searching ch340 or click here.

Step 1:

Initially Connect the hardware to your pc via Usb cable.In the device manager it will show USB2.0 Serial which means your ch340 driver is not installed.

Fig 1

Step 2:

Extract the downloaded zip file to your desired location.In that folder you will find a file named CH3401SER in which there will be a setup file as shown below.

Fig 2

Step 3

Open the setup file and a “Driver Setup” option will open. Just click on the install file.

Fig 3

Step 4

This installation will take some time, once installed it will show that the driver was successfully installed. Now you can open the device manger and there you will see that the driver has been successfully installed and a com port has been allotted.In the figure 4 you can see that com19 has been allotted.

Fig 4

Open the Arduino IDE and go tools and select the port. Open the blink led program and compile and dump it on the Arduino board to see if the Arduino is working.

I have successfully tested this driver on windows 10,8 and 7, and it works fine.

You can buy the Smd version of the Arduino from the below link

https://amzn.to/39pHBVz

You can also buy arduino uno from the below link.

https://amzn.to/2UO7Yk3