Ch340 Driver Mac Os Catalina

admin 29.12.2020 29.12.20

Software got updated and the links got disappeared, I couldn’t do the Wemos D1 mini using the older version anymore. I had to read again, now I’m going to document what needs to be done to just re-install a new version to be able to compile and upload the sketch to the wemos to be. I cannot even use High Sierra because of driver (and Java) issues. MacOS has become more restrictive about 3d party kernel extensions or kexts. 'They act as drivers — if you like a Windows analogy — and give access to your Mac’s hardware.' Something done on previous macOS that was inherited by Catalina update could be at issue.

Introduction — What is CH340G?

My golden rule is that if something took me longer than 15 minutes to figure out, then it’s worth documenting in a tiny blog post so that it would save time to others, just like many other similar posts saved me million hours by providing simple clear instructions.

Ch340 Driver Mac Os Catalina Installer

Recent versions of cheap Chinese clones of Arduino boards have been coming with a different USB/Serial chip, which replaces the usual FTDI. I read somewhere that licensing costs of FTDI make it prohibitive to companies selling boards for as little as $3, so I assume this is the main motivation. To be honest, as long as I can talk to my Arduino and buy it for $3 a piece, who cares? :)

Below you’ll find links to drivers for both Windows and Mac to make these work. Please leave a comment, if it worked or didn’t work for you, especially if you had to do anything special or hacky to make it work :)

Drivers for USB Connection

Windows

A fully signed drivers for Windows can be found below:

Mac OS-X

High Sierra (Added: November, 2017)

Looks like the updated version from their site works now as is. Here is the updated CH341SER_MAC.ZIP (148KB) cached locally, but for other platforms, please checkout their website.

Sierra (Added: October, 2016)

The Version 1.3 of the driver available on the vendor’s website causes a crash on Mac OS-X Sierra. Thankfully, Adrian Mihalko patched the driver, and made it available to the public.

The updated and patched Sierra Mac Driver can be downloaded here — CH34x_Install_V1.3.zip (174 Kb).

Thanks to this source for patching the driver: https://github.com/adrianmihalko/ch340g-ch34g-ch34x-mac-os-x-driver for patching the driver.

El Capitán (Added: Nov 22, 2015)

Many instructions down below were written for the old driver, which was not signed, and therefore was not working out of the box on OS-X Yosemite and El Capitan. The latest driver appears to be signed, and should work out the box. The new driver is here: CH34x_Install.zip (111Kb).

Thanks to Björn’s Techblog for posting the driver.

Inside the driver is a brief README with the following instructions:

Driver README

Extract the contents of the zip file to a local installation directory
Double-click CH34x_Install.pkg
Install according to the installation on procedure
Restart after finishing installing

After the installation is completed, you will find serial device in the devicelist(/dev/tty.wchusbserial*), and you can access it by serial tools.

If you can’t find the serial port then you can follow the steps below:

Ch340 Driver Mac Os Catalina Patcher

Open terminal and type ls /dev/tty* and see is there device like tty.wchusbserial;
Open System Report→Hardware→USB, on the right side USB Device Tree there willbe device named “Vendor-Specific Device” and check if the Current is normal.If the steps upper don’t work at all, please try to install the package again.

Please enter System Preferences ➜ Security & Privacy ➜ General, below thetitle 'Allow apps downloaded from:' you should choose the choice 2 ➜ 'Mac App Store andidentified developers' so that our driver will work normally.

Older Driver

This older version requires some hacking in order to get it to work. I am leaving instructions just in case someone needs it, or the new driver does not work for someone. Stage drama scripts pdf.

Download the driver

There are two main sites that people mention in the discussions about the driver:

- This driver appears newer than on the second link, and is from Dec 2013.
- NOTE: for me that site took a long long time to load, and then it took forever to download this tiny driver, so I put up a copy here CH341SER_MAC.ZIP (256Kb), so that you don’t have to wait. Hopefully they won’t go after me for mirroring their driver :)
Second site is some sketchy Russian Company that sells the USB programmer based on this chip: but this site only has an older version of the driver, from 2012, so I do not recommend downloading it.

Pre-Installation

the following pre-installation steps are only required on the two most recent versions of OS-X Yosemite and El Capitan. It is because the driver is not signed properly from Apple’s perspective. We are waiting on the developer to update the driver so that these pre-installation steps are no longer needed.

OS-X El Capitan Steps (only for the older driver!)

Reboot and press ⌘-R immediately after the chime to enter Recovery Mode
Open Terminal from the recovery mode
run the command csrutil enable --without kext
Reboot.

<div'>Thanks to this post for these instructions.</div>

OS-X Yosemite Steps

Open Terminal Application (it’s located in /Application/Utilities) and type this command once you see a prompt:
sudo nvram boot-args='kext-dev-mode=1'
Reboot.

<div'>see this post if youwish to know more details.</div>

Installation

Download the driver from here: CH341SER_MAC.ZIP (256Kb)
Double click the ZIP file do unzip it
Open the folder ~/Downloads/CH341SER_MAC
Run installer found in that folder
Restart when asked.

Usage

If the driver properly loaded, you should see the device in you /dev folder (this is for advanced command-line users of OSX only). On my machine it was called /dev/cu.wchusbserial1441140

This port is showing up correctly in Arduino 1.0.6 and Arduino 1.5.8.

However, if you are using the Eclipse Plugin, it is not smart enough to list this port in the list of available serial ports (either in project properties, or in the serial monitor). You will have to type the entire thing yourself: /dev/cu.wchusbserial1441140 and then Eclipse can upload your sketch.

That’s it! You should be ready to use the drivers and the board.

References

The Beginners Guide has general help. Click here for the Beginners Guide
If you need Mac-specific help, you are at the right page.

Join the Mailing list & search the archives for similar problem reports & how they were resolved, and/or ask the group. Please include enough info about the problem and situation so the community will be able to help you.

Not all functionality is supported on all radios. Aimbot free download xbox. See Model Support

As of MacOS 10.9, signed packages are required by default. Apple charges for this capability, and requires use of their tooling to do it. For the time being, MacOS users may need to disable signed package checking for CHIRP. Instructions provided by Jim, K2SON:

Locate the app in Finder.
Right click (control-click if you don't have a 2 button mouse) on the app and click Open.
You will get a dialog box about it being an unsigned app, click the Open button.
Enter an Administrator userid and password.
The app will now be flagged to allow it to be opened normally in the future.

Alternately, you can disable them for your entire system, although this has security implications that should not be ignored. Instructions for this provided by Tom, KD7LXL:

Open your System Preferences
Go to Security & Privacy, General tab.
Click the lock
Then choose Allow apps downloaded from: Anywhere.

As of 10.12 (Sierra) the UI for disabling app security was removed. The functionality is still there, but must be enabled from the command line.

To whitelist a single application (like an unzipped chirp-daily.app):

unzip chirp.zip
control click on the unzipped application and select New Terminal at Folder. (Don't see that menu item? Instructions to enable it)
run this command in the newly opened terminal window:

Alternately, you can disable them for your entire system, although this has security implications that should not be ignored. Run this command in a terminal:

references: single commandglobal

Unfortunately, Apple has made significant changes in 10.15 which cause major issues for independent software developers. CHIRP is significantly impacted and the future is unclear.

At the very least, Catalina users should use the 'unified' build of the app provided on the download page, which uses the system's 64-bit python runtime. Also note that there are significant limitations on what files unsigned applications can access which makes it very difficult to open, save, find, and otherwise organize image and CSV files with chirp. Please see issue #7147 for the current information about workarounds.

USB to serial cables are not merely wire, they contain small computer circuits at one end of the cable that respond as a USB device and convert the data to serial. These cables are not all the same, so the computer needs a software 'driver' so it can recognize the cable and speak to it correctly. You will need to install one of these 5 below.

FTDI cables¶

Note that with Mac OSX 10.9 'Mavericks', Apple provides their own driver for FTDI chipset. You may need to remove the OEM FTDI driver and use only the Apple FTDI driver, or you may need to disable the Apple FTDI driver and install the OEM FTDI drivers. YMMV.

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm
Version 1.5.1 is available for Mac OS X on 64 bit, 32 bit and PPC machines.

Prolific PL-2303 cables - official drivers for the genuine Prolific cables¶

FYI: your cable, if using Prolific chipset, is more likely to be using a counterfeit chip than an original.

http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/CustomerLogin.aspx
Login as guest/ guest & look in the Support section. Specified to work with Mac OSX 10.6, 10.7, & 10.8.

Generic PL-2303 cables (counterfeit and/or “Generic”) If you aren't sure what kind of inexpensive cable you have, try this one first.¶

For Lion (10.7.x), Mountain Lion (10.8.x), and Mavericks (10.9.x):¶

You can try this one, which install open source pl2303 driver and remove any other driver versions:
http://1drv.ms/Nl68Ru At this web page you may need to right-click or control-click to link to get it to download. After downloading, you may need to control-right click, then open in order to bypass Mac Gatekeeper.

For earlier versions of Mac OS X up to 10.5 Leopard. Also some reports of success with Snow Leopard, Lion:¶

RTSystems cables¶

for OSX 10.9.x (aka Mavericks):¶

Ch340 Driver Mac Os Catalina Install

see RTSystemsCablesAndMavericks

for OSX < 10.9.x:¶

https://www.rtsystemsinc.com/kb_results.asp?ID=9
http://www.rtsystems.us/downloads/MacDrivers/RTSystemUSBSerialDrivers.pkg.mpkg.zip

Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers (including Kenwood TH-D72)¶

http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBtoUARTBridgeVCPDrivers.aspx
Macintosh OSX driver for the Intel and PowerPC Platforms versions 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9.

Ch340 Driver Mac Os Catalina Dmg

WinChipHead CH340 series chipset¶

The WinChipHead CH340 series chipset is not compatible with the Prolific 2303 drivers. This chipset will report a Product ID of 0x7523 and a Vendor ID of 0x1a86. A signed driver compatible with Yosemite is available from http://blog.sengotta.net/signed-mac-os-driver-for-winchiphead-ch340-serial-bridge/ as the driver offered on the manufacturer's website (in Chinese) is not signed and requires allowing unsigned kernel extensions, which is a significant security risk on OS X.

In many cases you need to connect the cable to the radio first, then power the radio on, while holding down some buttons. The exact procedure varies by radio.
Some radios need to be put into a 'clone' mode to transfer to PC, some radios may need to be configured to use the mic/speaker jacks for PC transfer instead of for the speaker/mic. The exact procedure varies by radio.
You will need to download from the radio to CHIRP first, before uploading anything to the radio. CHIRP creates a template from the radio download so it knows how to talk to the radio.
If you want to download from one radio and upload those settings to another radio, first download from each radio to a separate “tab” of CHIRP. Then copy/paste from one tab to the other & upload back to the same radio that produced that tab. Do not try to upload to a radio directly from a tab that was not downloaded from that same radio.
Many USB to serial cables include a counterfeit Prolific chip. This can cause connection problems because the official Prolific driver will ignore the counterfeit chip. Some people have reported success by using an older version of the Prolific driver, or a 3rd party driver.
If you are using multiple USB cables, each will create a different “virtual port”, meaning that you will need to select the correct virtual port for your radio when connecting to your radio. CHIRP will give you this opportunity each time you download from the radio.
If CHIRP won’t launch & won't run, you may have neglected to install the Python runtime. CHIRP needs that. Even though Mac OS X includes Python built-in, the runtime has to be installed is because it includes PyGTK and some other libraries that Chirp requires, in addition to Python itself: http://www.d-rats.com/download/OSX_Runtime/
If your radio is not 'Supported', you can try downloading the newest Daily Build to see if support was recently added.

You can verify that the drivers are installed & working by connecting the USB cable to your Mac, then running “System Profiler”, or “System Information” (found in /Applications/Utilities ). When the USB cable is connected and drivers correctly installed, the cable will show up in the USB section of the System Profiler.

Another way to see that the driver is correctly installed is to open Terminal and type:

It will return a list of virtual serial ports including something similar to:

You may also type:

That will return a long list of kexts, including something similar to this at the bottom (most recently installed are listed last):

Look at the CHIRP log for clues.