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I'm a complete newbie with Arduino. I've bought a couple of Nano clones from China. According to supplier description, it is Arduino Nano V3.0 ATMEGA328P ATMEGA328 CH340. Not sure why they list both 328 and 328P, but my struggle is to make it work anyway: IDE doesn't see it.

Power LED is on, L-LED is blinking regularly.

After some online reading, I conclude that the root cause may be in the USB-serial chip. My question is: if, when connecting this device to my Mac, I see a /dev/tty.usbserial-1420 device appearing, does it mean that the USB-serial interface actually works correctly? Or does it not, and I should continue trying with installing some extra drivers etc.?

I am on Macbook Pro 2015, Mac OS 10.14.3. Many thanks in advance.

The error I am getting in IDE is:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00

Note: In a similar question the user didn't have the usbserial device in his /dev list.

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  • Have you installed a CH340 driver for Mac OSX? arduino.stackexchange.com/a/17358/37523
    – VE7JRO
    Mar 8, 2019 at 23:35
  • The question was not how to solve the problem, but what is the device that I do see in /dev.
    – texnic
    Mar 9, 2019 at 18:10
  • Also note that in the linked answer, the user didn't have the usbserial device. So presumably nothing at all was happening when connecting his Arduino. In my case, the usbserial device appears. So I don't see how this question is a duplicate.
    – texnic
    Mar 9, 2019 at 18:29
  • What happens when you select /dev/tty.usbserial-1420 as your serial port in the IDE, then try to upload a sketch? Does it upload? If not, install the driver.
    – VE7JRO
    Mar 9, 2019 at 22:07
  • @VE7JRO, indeed, it didn't work, I installed the driver, it does work. That's why I am wondering what this device is.
    – texnic
    Mar 10, 2019 at 19:43

1 Answer 1

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These China clones are frequently shipped with no bootloader burned to the chip. There is a way to get it working but, you need a working Arduino or programmer to burn the bootloader. I have used an Arduino Uno to burn a bootloader on my nano. The Uno and nano were both purchased from the same seller, on the same order, from AliExpress. Here are the instructions that worked for me.

The instructions provide a link to download the Windows drivers so here’s a link to the macos drivers. CH341_MAC.ZIP (CH340 uses CH341 drivers)

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  • This one does have the bootloader, and with the WCH driver, IDE works. I was only wondering what usbserial is, if it's not what is needed to "talk" to Arduino.
    – texnic
    Mar 10, 2019 at 19:44

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