Problem with the CH340 board/driver

Development Boards Arduino
1

I have new SIK v4.1 kits for some students and we are having a very hard time with the new boards. We are using Windows 10 machines. We’ve updated Arduino and installed the drivers available here (https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/ho … leshooting). The CH340 shows up in device manager under ports.

In the Arduino IDE I opened the Blink program, chose the Uno board, and selected the COM port that matches the CH340 in Device Manager. It says Uploading… but then errors out with this message:

Reading | ###############################avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

######avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

avr_read(): error reading address 0x0000

read operation not supported for memory “flash”

avrdude: failed to read all of flash memory, rc=-2

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

avrdude done. Thank you.

the selected serial port

does not exist or your board is not connected

The cable works fine. I can download to the old RedBoards and other Arduinos just fine. Every once in a while it decides to work and the program will load, but I haven’t found a pattern. I’ve tried restarting the computer, switching to other known good cables, other computers, pressing the reset button, unplugging and replugging the USB. There is nothing connected to the board on any pin.

What am I missing?

2

Hello msgeer,

There could possibly be an issue with uploading through the CH340 to a target “Uno”.

Please try installing our RedBoard from our Arduino libraries. Using our JSON link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spark … index.json , you’ll be able to search for our “RedBoard” in the Arduino Board Manager.

If you’re unsure how to install those files:

  • - Copy & past JSON link into File>Preferences>"Additional Boards Manager URLs"
  • - Go to Tools>Board:>Boards Manager...
  • - Search for "RedBoard"
  • - Install "Sparkfun AVR Boards" version 1.1.13 (or higher)
  • - Upload code using board target "SparkFun RedBoard"

    • This may not solve it but will give me a better indication as to what could be going wrong.