Fixing upload problem with Arduino Uno Clone with CH340 on Linux

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If you are running Linuxmin 19 use this instead.

I just got my first Arduino Uno board with a CNC shield and wanted to setup the development environment on my freshly installed Linuxmint 18.1 laptop to start playing with it.

Once I got the Arduino IDE installed and tried to upload some of the example sketches. I was greeted with the following errors.

         Using Port                    : /dev/ttyUSB3
         Using Programmer              : arduino
         Overriding Baud Rate          : 115200
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 2 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 3 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 4 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
...

After Googling to get some idea of what is the problem. It seem that this clone is using the CH340G USB to serial chip instead of the FTDI chipset used on the Genuine board.

lsusb

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 03f0:231d Hewlett-Packard Broadcom 2070 Bluetooth Combo
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1bcf:2805 Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc.
Bus 002 Device 015: ID 1a86:7523 QinHeng Electronics HL-340 USB-Serial adapter

The ch341 module that came with Linuxmint distribution was able to detect and load the module but uploading sketch using USB to serial communicating with this chipset is still a problem.

lsmod | grep ch34
ch341                  20480  0
usbserial              40960  7 ch341,qcserial,usb_wwan

To resolve this. First remove the ch341 module and replace it with one build locally from source provided by the manufacturer.

sudo rmmod ch341
sudo mv /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/ch341.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/ch341.ko~

Then download the driver source from here.

Unzip it and compile the kernel module locally and install it.

cd ~/CH341SER_LINUX
sudo make 
sudo mv ch34x.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/usb/serial
sudo depmod -a

Unplug the board and reconnect and reconfirm the board selection is “Arduino/Genuino Uno” and the port is properly selected in Arduino IDE and the upload should work.

 

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Creating a filleted cylinder in OpenSCAD

The following OpenSCAD module will create a filleted cylinder that can be used in your 3D print project when stronger sheering structural support is required.

Basically it uses rotate_extrude() on a circle to form a donut which will be used later as a cut out operation using the difference() on the smaller cylinder at the base. The fillets will be joined together using union() to form a solid filleted cylinder for the final result. At the moment, the top and bottom fillet radius can individually specified and will be used if it is greater than 0.

Here is an example of how the module can be used:

klam_fillet_cylinder(5, 1, 2, 1, 50);
translate([10,0,0]) klam_fillet_cylinder(10, 1, 0, 1, 50);
translate([-10,0,0]) klam_fillet_cylinder(10, 1, 2, 0, 50);

Constructed fillet cylinders:

module klam_fillet_cylinder(
    cylinder_height=2,
    cylinder_radius=1,
    fillet_radius_bottom=1,
    fillet_radius_top=0,
    nfaces=50
) {
    /* created by Kevin Lam on Dec 3, 2016 */
    union() {      
        cylinder(cylinder_height, r=cylinder_radius, $fn=nfaces, false);
        
        if (fillet_radius_bottom > 0) {
            difference() {
                cylinder(fillet_radius_bottom, r=cylinder_radius+fillet_radius_bottom, $fn=nfaces, false);
                translate([0, 0, fillet_radius_bottom])
                rotate_extrude($fn=nfaces)
                translate([cylinder_radius+fillet_radius_bottom, 0, 0])
                circle(fillet_radius_bottom, $fn=nfaces);
            }
        }
        
        if (fillet_radius_top>0) {
            difference() {
                translate([0,0,cylinder_height-fillet_radius_top])
                cylinder(fillet_radius_top, r=cylinder_radius+fillet_radius_top, $fn=nfaces, false);
                
                translate([0, 0, cylinder_height-fillet_radius_top])
                rotate_extrude($fn=nfaces)
                translate([cylinder_radius+fillet_radius_top, 0, 0])
                circle(fillet_radius_top, $fn=nfaces);
            }
        }
    }
}