Arduino UNO SMD Missing Drivers

With Arduino being an open-source electronics platform, their PCB designs are freely available, which means it is possible to get a generic Arduino board for much less than the branded boards.

Like when I purchased a 4WD chassis. Which also came with an unbranded Arduino UNO SMD.

What’s the difference with Arduino UNO SMD?
The Arduino UNO SMD, uses a surface mount version of the ATmega328P instead of the through hole version.

Arduino UNO SMD

But i had a problem with this generic board, when I came to use the board, I wasn’t able to communicate with the board via the Arduino IDE.

When I opened Device manager to double-check I was connecting using the correct COM port, it became clear that there was a missing driver as it was showing as “USB Serial”.

Device Manager

For any missing drivers that Windows isn’t able to automatically find and install and it isn’t clear where to get the drivers from as this was an unbranded board.

The first step is to find the Hardware IDs of the device by right-clicking on the device > Details and Selecting Hardware IDs. In this instance I could search for the Hardware ID and see that it was for a “CH340 Serial to USB Adapter” which had the Hardware ID “USB\VID_1A86&PID_7523”.

Hardware IDs

It turns out it is very common for the generic Arduino UNO SMD’s to require this driver. For convenience please see below for a download of the driver.

NOTE: The download is provided for convenience and is provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied.

To install this driver, right-click on the missing device and select “update driver”. Then select “browse my computer for drivers” and select the folder where you have downloaded and extracted the above download.

Install Wizard
Install Wizard

Once installation is complete the device is ready to use.

Please get in touch if you have any comments or suggestions via email: contact@woodward.digital

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