If you are fans of searching for cheap electronic components on eBay, you may have noticed the appearance of new models of Arduino clones in recent months, identified as CH340G. These boards are much cheaper than other Arduino models. In this post, we will discuss these new cheap Arduinos thanks to the CH340G chip.
What is the CH340G chip?
The CH340G is a new USB / TTL converter, which replaces the ATMEGA16U2 and the FT232RL. At first glance, it must be much cheaper (I estimate between €2-3) because the emergence of these models has drastically reduced the prices of clone Arduino boards.
Of course, the rest of the specifications and features remain exactly the same. These new clone boards are not only compatible but are, for all practical purposes, identical to the “original” Arduinos.
Remember that Arduino is an Open Source project, so these generic boards are perfectly legal. What would be illegal is to identify them with the original logo, or not indicate in the advertising that it is a clone board.
This small revolution has made what we discussed some time ago in the post What is Arduino? What model to buy? outdated enough to need an update.
Currently, the price of the Arduino Uno R3 Atmega 328P has dropped to €2.80. The Arduino Mega R3 2560 drops to €7.50. Meanwhile, the Arduino Nano v3.0 Atmega 328P 5V 16Mhz is sold for the irresistible amount of (hold onto your drool) €1.95.
It goes without saying that, at this price, my favorite board has stopped being the Arduino Mini Pro 2 (€1.70), to make way for the Arduino Nano v3.0 as my favorite battle board, given the convenience of having an integrated mini USB port, and not needing an external programmer (as the Arduino Mini Pro v2 does).
How to recognize a board with CH340G?
Recognizing a board with a CH340G model is really simple. You can quickly check by looking at the chip, as indicated in the following image.
If you do not have the board physically because you haven’t bought it yet, it is normal for the listing to state whether it has a CH340G chip. On the other hand, if you are going to buy an Arduino and it is very cheap, similar to the prices I mentioned, it most likely has a CH340G chip.
Be careful, some manufacturers will take the opportunity to sell these new boards at the previous price. Although it is not a scam, because these boards are fully functional, you will be unnecessarily losing a few euros.
Getting our CH340G Arduino board to work
As we have mentioned, these boards work just like any Arduino, so all functions, tutorials, and programs for Arduino will work without any problem. The only requirement is to install the CH340G driver for the computer to recognize Arduino as a USB device.
Drivers for various operating systems are available on this page CH340G Drivers, or directly from the following links for Windows CH340G Driver Windows Xp, 7, and 8, and for Linux CH340GLinux Driver.
Just download and run it, and you can use Arduino with complete normality, programming it with the Arduino IDE, and of course with serial communication.