New to microprocessors and new to sparkfun. I purchased the ESP32 board and following the directions from Stacks, I need to connect to the unit. I have a USB cable that connects and have it on my laptop. Power light comes on and the led is blinking. I have the latest Adrino software. I went to the spark site and found the CH340 drive. Downloaded it and installed. Still the port is greyed out. Computer has win 10 on it.
I did download, installed and reboot the computer. Tried different ports. Have not tried another cable.
Next step is to try on another computer, but would like to have it on this laptop.
If you go to the control bar “Windows” icon and search for “control panel”. Open that, and select “Device Manager”. In the menu bar under “View” ensure that the option “Show Hidden Devices” is selected.
With your device powered up and plugged in, select the “Ports (COM & LPT)” line and expand that, I’ve added an example.
Yours should show up here somewhere. Failing that, see if there is a line in there with something like “other device” “unknown device” or “unspecified device” (or something along those lines, I can’t recall the exact text).
No change on anything with the device manager. Plug it in, pwr on board, flashing led. I did have to select to show hidden items. Normally if u attach anything to usb , shows a msg about loading drivers if u never loaded them up in the 1st place. So next step is different computer and find another cable. I didn’t buy the sparkfun cable and using the cable that powered up the battery for my ring doorbell.
Ok, have some time to update and play around before I need to drive the wife to MRI doctors.
So I installed on my work laptop and no issues. Works and shows the com port. That means the board is good and cable.
I have Bitdefender and looked into that. It can scan automaticly anything you add to the USB port. I wouldn’t think it would stop it, but turned it off. Still port is greyed out.
Windows 10, decided to find out why I cannot find the ports within the device manager. Its old legacy, so found out how to add devices to my tree. Looked at the example from a reply and added all items. Still port is greyed out.
So what is the next step? Adding the board and removing does not add anything to device manager or remove.
Not sure how to take a screen shot and add to this response. Link below with my device manager tree.
Those warning icons mean that the devices aren’t properly loaded - either the drivers are missing or are incorrect. You can right-click on them and “update driver”; if the “search automatically for drivers” doesn’t work, then do a “Browse my computer for drivers” and navigate to the Arduino IDE install directory (c:\Program Files (x86)\drivers) since those on your list are the standard ones.
If all of that fails, then uninstall the Arduino IDE, reboot, and re-install the IDE. During installation you are asked for permission to install these drivers and I think you might have skipped over those when installing.
Thanks for the info. Will have to try that on my main laptop. I have my secondary laptop which is acting differently. I thought I had the comm ports figured out and the sparkfun board was assigned Com24, but checking my Eaton Easy Soft program, that COM was assigned to a Bluetooth module. So back to ground zero and still I cannot communicate. I didn’t buy the USB micro-B Cable. I found the one I use to power up my Ring doorbell fit. Attached it to my thing and it powers up and blinking blue light. Could it be a possibility the cable can only supply 5V to charge the Ring battery and will not allow communication?
So when I plug this in, my device manager does not update with new device. Removing it doesn’t change a thing. Any suggestions would be great!
Back to Laptop 1. Original install. I know when I loaded the drivers the 1st time, never had the ports showing. Added all the ports that are shown above. All ports cannot be activated. Checked to make sure they have the latest drive. So device cannot start. The specific request is not a valid operation for the target device.
Found another usb cord and tried it. Lights are the same. Nothing shows up on the computer device manager with adding or removing device. Should have bought the cord just to put that to bed.
Also the last thing I haven’t done is add the header set. I wouldn’t think that would stop communication, but not sure if soldering that in would make a difference. Still waiting on them from Spark.
The cable and/or device isn’t the problem here, the device driver status is independent of whether it is plugged in or not. Can you tried uninstalling the Arduino IDE, (rebooting), and re-installing it?
If things work on another computer the board is fine.
Some virus scanners get a false positive on the CH340 drivers though, you might try disabling your virus scanner, installing the driver then testing the board to see if it works. If it does, re-enable the virus scanner and test the board again, it should continue working.
SV-Zanshin. Yes, removing the driver/rebooting and reinstall was done as one of my 1st checks.
With the drive uninstalled, should the computer see a new device being added when I plug in the board? Will I see any notification?
I added a post asking if the header set needs to be added before I pwr it up, and nothing was replied. Guessing it does not.
TS-Chris, i have 2 computers I can use. My own which has windows 10. The device manager does not show the ports even with the show hidden items selected. The 2nd computer has windows 10, but have added items that require a comm port. Those work. When I add the board to that computer, doesn’t show any device being added.
I have a 2nd board which I can try. Just want to make sure I am not doing anything wrong with the 1st before I try the 2nd.
If the drivers for a USB aren’t installed and you plug in the device, windows normally auto-detects that and attempts to install the appropriate driver. Some older drivers are tricky in that they need to be installed on classic COM-Ports (smaller port numbers like 3 or 4) - I think that applies to the tinyISP and the like but certainly not to anything modern like this board. That makes me think that the Zadig application (https://zadig.akeo.ie/) used for some of those programmers to install the drivers might work for you; you can download the software and see if it detects your ports.
I like that site, but didn’t do anything. I decided to just buy and wait for the USB cable direct from Sparkfun. Got it yesterday and hooked it up this morning. No issues, assigned com port 3 and can actually start programming the board. Thank you for your help and this forum.
I know I will have many more questions in the future.
