Using the CH340 Usb serial connection with Arm 64 - Not

Well, this is irritating. One of the reasons I got my fancy new Arm powered CoPilot PC was to write code for my little devices, including ones powered by the Wemos D1 Mini. The D1 Mini uses an ESP8266 connected to a CH340 usb to serial adapter chip which provides the link to a connected computer. On every other PC I’ve used (including a day of release MacBook Air with a brand new Apple M1 processor) this just worked. On my shiny new CoPilot PC, less so. Unlike Apple, who seem to have been able to get device drivers to work over their processor emulation, the Microsoft Prism emulator - which runs existing PC programs written for Intel hardware - doesn’t work for drivers.

So there is no way I can plug a D1 Mini device into my new machine and deploy code to it. I’ve tested ESP-32 boards (these are newer and probably what I should be using anyway) and they work fine. But I rather wish I’d done some due diligence before parting with cash for my new machine.

Strong advice for anyone who fancies doing embedded development with one of these Snapdragon powered platforms - make sure it can talk to the hardware you are using.

Using Node.js on a Snapdragon device

I’m liking my new Windows Co-pilot machine. One further tip. If you want to use Node.js on your machine, make sure you install the X86 version not the ARM64 version when downloading from Node. The ARM64 version installs OK, but then explodes into a million pieces when you try and do anything with it.