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Is it possible to perform a query for the hardware

colporteur

I have a box of Nano knock-offs. I've accumulated them over a number of years from different suppliers. I'm currently experiencing a problem with a most recent batch of knock-off Nano's and thought how are they different than others I have bought.

I aware the CH340 USB to serial driver chip varies across the knock-offs. That issues has caused me grief getting the Arduino IDE's working with MS Windows drivers. Is there a sketch that scans the underlying hardware, like lshw from the command line of my Linux computer.

I've queried the internet for a solution before posting here. The results are how to read sensors. I'm looking looking for low level. If but nothing else it might tell me what microcontroller the boards have. Even with a magnifying glass the knock-off boards are hard to read. 

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  • Hi Sean,

    I don't have a good answer, but, it should be possible to distinguish the CH340 from other serial port chips, by doing the following in Windows (using the Device Manager).

    image

    The screenshot above shows the output for a different serial port chip, I don't have a CH340 device here to compare. You can see a VID and PID value (vendor and product IDs).

    According to the Internet, if the device is CH340, then the output should have a VID value of 1A86 and PID value 7523

    The above doesn't indicate what microcontroller is used however. I can imagine there may well be some special test Arduino code that might identify a subtle difference in functionality and report it, but I'm not familiar with any.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I'm currently doing a Arduino workshop for model railroaders. Having the correct CH340 drivers are a must if the Arduino IDE is to work. Your screen shots have been appearing in my nightmares that wake me up each night. I just received a report that a change to the driver I provided solved the issue for one participant.

    Your post has given me more information. 

    "According to the Internet, if the device is CH340, then the output should have a VID value of 1A86 and PID value 7523"

    That is what I have on a computer with a working Arduino IDE. Great find shabaz!!!!!! I will add it to my toolbox for troubleshooting.

    Break...Break....

    I'm more curious about the hardware on the Nano itself. Is there someway to report what it has, say the controller, USB-serial chip, memory......

  • in reply to colporteur

    The CH340 is the USB controller and USB-serial converter in one. Keep in mind though, that checking the USB VID and PID isn't a guaranteed way to identify something, as the manufacturer can program any VID and PID they want. A knockoff with dubious quality will still have the "official" VID and PID programmed.

    For the microcontroller itself, there's no real way to test it. Your best bet would be finding or writing some sort of test program for the specific MCU (ATMEGA328 in this case) and flashing that. One method I've seen is testing how noisy the ADC is, and comparing them against other MCUs to find outliers.

    Unfortunately, there are many low quality knockoffs that don't work well, and it's difficult to tell without testing them in-depth. I've completely ditched using any ATMEGA328 based boards, this being one of the reasons.

  • in reply to vmate

    I use Nano's for animation in model railroad layouts. The one I work on currently has 72 Nano's. At today's price for an Arduino OEM Nano the build would be price prohibitive. I have designed a few animation boards around the Nano. If I decide to make a change it become a challenge.

    If ATMega328 has fallen out of favour, what was you next go to?

  • in reply to colporteur

    I mostly use Raspberry Pi Picos, with the arduino-pico core. If not using any ATMEGA specific hardware(like manually working with timers and such), there's a good chance that old code will just work without any changes. They are also cheaper than most Nano clones, while being a *lot* better at pretty much everything.

    One of the biggest potential issues when migrating away from the Nano will be 5V IO, almost all modern replacements use 3.3V instead.

    Also, there are a lot of development boards available based on the RP2040(the microcontroller on the Raspberry Pi Pico) from various manufacturers, so it's a lot easier to find something that fits a project well.

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  • in reply to colporteur

    I mostly use Raspberry Pi Picos, with the arduino-pico core. If not using any ATMEGA specific hardware(like manually working with timers and such), there's a good chance that old code will just work without any changes. They are also cheaper than most Nano clones, while being a *lot* better at pretty much everything.

    One of the biggest potential issues when migrating away from the Nano will be 5V IO, almost all modern replacements use 3.3V instead.

    Also, there are a lot of development boards available based on the RP2040(the microcontroller on the Raspberry Pi Pico) from various manufacturers, so it's a lot easier to find something that fits a project well.

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