FTDI Broke my Arduino Nano |
Written by Bryce Ringwood |
I know, I know ... the Arduino isn't an old radio. I just didn't know where to put this annoying topic. I'm sure plenty of my er, followers have Arduinos, and some might be banging their heads against this problem, like I did. Here's what happened. I purchased an Arduino Nano from a reputable firm, along with some attitude (that's "xyz" not "mental") sensors hoping to make a magnetometer among other things. I installed everything on a Windows 8.1 computer, wired it all up, programmed and everything worked well. Then everything stopped. I looked in the computer's device manager and saw a yellow triangle plus exclamation mark with the cryptic wording FT232RL. To compound matters, the program on the Nano was clearly running - the Nano just didn't want to talk to me over the USB port any more. Even more puzzling - the Nano showed as an FT232RL on my other computers - but wouldn't work. I did what anyone would do in this situation, namely PANIC. I frantically googled everything I could. I assumed it must be my software. I then found that Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) had updated their device driver to prevent fake chips from working, but didn't think that could apply to me - after all my chips had authentic FTDI trademarks and markings.
The Fakeduino FTDI chip with fake trademark and markings waiting to trap its unsuspecting victim i.e. Me I bought another Nano - genuine Arduino - branded. It worked perfectly. I bought an In-System-Programmer (ISP - worth every penny) and reprogrammed the bad Nano to blink - which it did. Still no response from the USB. OK - If push came to shove, I would replace the FDTI chip, but not out of choice, since the hot-air pencil used to remove the bad chip would probably melt the plastic round the header pins. Eventually I had to face the facts - my Nano's UART had been prevented from working ("bricked") by FTDI. They had done this via a Microsoft update. The important thing to note is that not only did they prevent the driver software from operating with the chip, but they also modified the chip itself so that it would no longer operate with earlier software on my old XP computers. At this point there were a few possibilities:
Of course, you should opt for the first option, but real men don't return stuff. Naturally, I went for option 4 as it was the least sensible. Here's what you have to do:
I don't believe FTDI did the right thing, since the end-user is the helpless victim and like me, is unaware that the product they buy contains counterfeit chips. I can understand FTDI's rage at having their property (and their employee's jobs) stolen and in a normal society, we should return all counterfeits and get our money back all the way back down the chain, so the counterfeiters eventually lose. In this context, a normal society is one where honesty prevails and money represents an honest exchange of values. Sadly, the only people to emerge from this unscathed are the counterfeiters who can only operate because a sick society allows them to do so.
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