CH340 is a TTL (serial) to USB converter and vice versa. This chip has been used in some boards such as Arduino boards (non-original Arduinos), ESP8266, etc. The boards using the CH340 chip, don’t need a programmer in order to access the processor or to program them.

But there is a downside. An extra driver must be installed before starting to work with boards having this IC. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install the CH340 driver.

If you connect your board to the computer before installing the driver, your computer will not recognize the board correctly and you will see following image in Device Manager.

To open Device Manager, search for it in the Windows Start menu.

Follow the steps below to install the CH340 driver:

After downloading the driver, open it and click Install.

After successful installation you should see this message.

If your driver has been installed correctly, and if you connect your board to a computer, then you can see its name and port number in the Port section. For example, my Arduino board is connected to COM7.

Open the Arduino IDE software. Go to the Tools menu and from the Port section, select the port number appropriate port that your board is connected to. Note that this port number must be the same as the number you saw in the previous step.