MobiFlight Community Support

Here is a solution for all of you that might experience issues with your COMPATIBLE Mega 2560 R3 boards (I dont believe this applies to the people using original Arduino boards).
Started out yesterday (for the first time ever) to hook up a mega 2560 board (compatible) and with the intention of flashing it to mobiflight. Mobilfight did not recognize the board hence no flashing. Had done a Vanilla Arduino SW install and - allthough I'm not an Arduino Buff - it seemed that the Arduino system also did not recognize the board since there were no comport available (in the tools manu in Arduino). Checked WIN10 device manager and I could see a USB serial device under Other devices with a yellow exclamation mark to it.
Apparently the Arduino SW could not provide the right driver for my board.So...I looked around a little and did indeed find a driver that worked for me. I have two compatible boards from different manufactures so my bet is that they will work for some - maybe most - *compatible* megaboards.
The file you are will find yourself googling for is called CH341SER.EXE. I found mine in the link below. A lot of chinese text is going on but once you get to execute the file it will give you three options in english which you all can handle.
I hope this can save some time for others with compatible Mega boards.
Link to file:
http://www.wch-ic.com/downloads/CH341SER_EXE.html

Best Regards
Michael Christiansen/Silkeborg/Denmark

For the admin.... Could I suggest a link to this posting on this page:
https://www.mobiflight.com/en/documentation/module.html
With a qualifier that if users experience installation issues with *compatible* Megaboards they should look here.
It was at this page I was looking for info and the info there is only applicale for original Megaboards I suspect. I bet it would save a lote of new users some heartburn.

Hi Welcome to Mobiflight!

Thanks for your Posting.....

But let me say.... This is already known .
I agree a short Information in the FAQ would be interesting. We should do this !

By the way..... This is not a disadvantage of the Clones !
I will say 98% of our USers work with Clones..... Normaly nobody buy a Real Arduino for 40$+ if you get the 100% same usage for 8$, too.

Also lots of Clones not need the CH340 Driver in case they use the same USB Device like the Origional Arduinos.... But sure.... Most of the Clones use the cheaper CH340 !

Badly we can not directly support here..... Cause the Drivers have a trademark. BY the way. You got the same trouble with Origional Arduinos. They will not work without the correct Drivers..... Here you need to install one time the Arduino IDE that include the drivers.

I will ask Sebastian in our next meeting. Maybe there is a way to ask for a free licence to include the 2 Driver Files into MF itself !

TYVM...Its an exiting realm of possibilities that opens up now being able to use Mobiflight with the Arduino. And glad that I could help the community a little. I tried to leave as many keywords as possible so of people that has this problem quickly will come to this post. But the FAQ would indeed be better :-). I will most likely see you around in here soon :-)