Mac Arduino Driver
How to Fix FTDI Driver Issue on Mac and macOS
Ongoing macOS FTDI driver issues plague many users connecting the Arduino IDE to boards that use an FTDI chip. Since our boards use an FTDI chip for USB-to-serial communication, we have witnessed some of these issues when working with our boards using Mac and macOS.
The symptoms we have observed generally include the spontaneous loss of the USB serial port connection to the board or loss of the port after disconnecting and then reconnecting the board from the USB programming cable.
Apple provides its own FTDI drivers and they might not be compatible with your FTDI devices. Sparkfun details for older Mac OS's how to uninstall Apple drivers and install the latest FTDI driver (v.2.4.4 is the one I recently installed on my mac and is working great) After uninstalling the Apple one, here is the location for the FTDI drivers.
Rebooting the system can temporarily restore the port, but the problem eventually comes back. Since we’ve seen this issue pop up internally and with many customers, we decided to share what solution has been working for us so far.
The exact cause of this problem is not certain, but it seems to be related to Apple’s support, or lack thereof, for FTDI drivers in the operating system. Earlier versions of Mac OS X did not support FTDI drivers, so users would have to install third-party FTDI drivers. Somewhere around the release of macOS 10.12 Sierra (and maybe earlier), native support for FTDI drivers was included.
So, if you have followed an upgrade path from an older version of the OS without native FTDI support to a new version that has it, there can be contention between the native and third-party drivers. This potentially leads to the mysterious port disappearance issue.
Get the Arduino drivers. For PC users, go to the Connect menu in mBlock: For Mac users, download the driver. Unfortunately, the latest update for the Mac OSX introduced an issue with this driver. Find out about the solution to this issue. Connect your robot to your computer via USB cable, turn your robot on, and open mBlock. You should see an open port named USB Serial Port Right click on the USB Serial Port and choose the Update Driver Software option. Maybe its just me, but i have some concern about the CH340CH341 USB to serial MAC OS driver given it seems like non-official arduino software. Therefore it will probably never be included with the bundled drivers.
We have found uninstalling the third-party drivers to be a solution. The instructions below have seemed to work for anyone here at Alorium Technology that was observing the FTDI issues.
Instructions
- To uninstall FTDI drivers you must be logged on to your computer as a root user. Follow Apple’s directions if this needs to be enabled on your computer.
- Be careful! By enabling root, you have privileges to change and delete files that are required by your computer.
- Follow steps 4.1 and 4.2 in FTDI Chip’s “FTDI Driver Installation Guide” to uninstall all third-party drivers on your computer.
- Disable root on your computer. Follow Apple’s directions below.
- Reboot your system
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- July 8, 2019
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Clone Arduino & driver chip CH340, CH340G, CH341
Category : RESOURCES
The CH340/CH341 chip is used by a number of Arduino compatible cards to provide USB connectivity.
Many operating systems do not recognize these chip natively because they lack the drivers and consequently we have an error due to lack of drivers.
The lack of this driver does not allow you to communicate with the hardware platforms and to use the Arduino development software.
No panic, driver installation is very easy!
The driver must be downloaded from the official (Chinese) website.
Once the unzip of the package has been executed, it is possible to proceed with the update of the driver for the device CH340/CH341 and equivalent (download driver only for your OS):
WINDOWS 32/64bit (version: 3.4 – 2016/09/27)
Drivers in the Windows OS are missing, you need to download and install them.
LINUX 32/64bit (version: 1.5 – 2018/03/18)
The drivers are integrated into different Linux distributions. If the device is not recognized, download the Linux CH340/CH341 driver.
MAC OS 32/64bit (version: 1.5 – 2018/07/05)
This driver is for MacOS Sierra/High Sierra. Do not install the drivers for the Mojave, because it seems that the latest versions are equipped with the built CH340/CH341 support.
Installation
• Unplug any CH34* devices.
• Unload the old drivers if running:
• sudo kext unload /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext
• sudo kext unload /System/Library/Extensions/usb.kext
• Remove the old driver by issuing one of the following commands (depending on your installation):
• sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/usb.kext
• sudo rm -rf /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext
• Double-click on the CH34x_Install_V1.3.pkg file and install (no need to reboot)
• Instead of rebooting, you can force quit Installer after it completes.
• Load the new driver:
• sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext
• Plug in your device. It should now be listed under the /dev directory. Examples:
• /dev/cu.wchusbserial1410
• /dev/cu.wchusbserial1420
ANDROID (version: 1.5 – 2018/03/18)
Mac Arduino Drivers
Enjoy!