Why does the standard Arduino IDE not include the CH341G USB Drivers? Can anyone explain why the standard Arduino IDE 1.6 distribution does not include support for the popular CH341G USB/serial drivers?

I am using these USB/serial chips in several teaching projects for CoderDojo and it is somewhat difficult to have each student download the drivers and reboot their PCs for each class. It seems like both Mac and PC users would benefit from having these drivers loaded directly into the standard Arduino IDE.

Is there possibly some security concern? I know that the latest Mac requires that the drivers are digitally signed. In fact for many modern Macs to use the drivers we have to disable the digital signature checks.

Here is the link to the official drivers.

Here is a good article on how to download the drivers.

BTW, the command to disable the digital signature check on the mac we need to do the following:

In the Mac "Terminal" application enter:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"


Then we must reboot the mac. Then when we want to re-enable the checks change the 1 to 0:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=0"


If we don't do this command, the Arduino App will not show the serial ports. Do to this go to Tools -> Port Menu within the Arduino application.

/dev/tty.SerialPort
/dev/cu.SerialPort


I should mention that the CH340G are also used in many "Arduino Nano" clones from China. Perhaps that is why the drivers are not included?

Tags: Driver CH340 Setup Installation
This is simply because the CH340G is not supported officially. The Arduino IDE is meant primarily for genuine Arduinos.

What you could do is repackage the Arduino zip file with the required library and create a basic script file to install the drivers with just a couple of clicks.

Or you could shift to another board that uses the ATMEGA32u4 as this might not require anything special. Have a look here. I don't have tested this board so you will need to check the quality and whether it works with your projects.