Arduino Board Connected to Laptop
Arduino manufactures a wide variety of boards, each differing in size, microcontroller type, and processing capabilities.
To learn more about the Arduino UNO R3 board, check out the “Arduino UNO R3” topic in the Arduino basics section. You can also explore the range of available Arduino boards by clicking here.
To program Arduino boards for various applications, you’ll need the Arduino IDE, which is available for free on the Arduino website as part of Arduino’s open-source offerings. Download the latest version for your operating system here.
There’s also an online version of the IDE. To access it, create an account on the Arduino website. For a guide on using the online IDE, click here.
To get started with the Arduino IDE and learn about adding and using libraries, refer to the “Using Arduino IDE” and “Adding a new library to Arduino IDE” topics in the Arduino basics section.
To connect an Arduino board to the Arduino IDE, use a compatible USB cable to connect it to a laptop or PC with the IDE installed. When connected, the Arduino device driver usually installs automatically if you’ve installed the Windows IDE using the installer (for Windows XP to 10). However, if you downloaded the IDE as a ZIP package, the driver may not install automatically.
Follow the steps below to install the device driver manually. Once installed, you can try running the inbuilt “Blink” program to blink the on-board LED. For instructions on blinking the on-board LED, refer to this link.
To install the driver, follow these steps:
- Connect your Arduino board to the computer or laptop using a USB cable. Windows will attempt to install the driver automatically but may fail. A notification indicating the installation failure will appear on your screen.
2. Open the Device Manager from the Control Panel on your computer or laptop. Under the “Other Devices” section, you should see an “Unknown Device,” as shown in the image below.
3. Right-click on the “Unknown Device” and select the “Update Driver Software” option, as shown below.
4. After completing step 3, the “Update Driver Software” window will appear, as shown below. Select the “Browse my computer for driver software” option.
5. A window will appear where you can select the location from which to install the driver. See the image below.
Select the “Include subfolders” option.
Then, using the browse option, navigate to the drivers folder in the location where you unzipped the IDE.
In this case, the IDE was unzipped to the D drive in a folder named “Arduino.” Inside the folder “arduino-1.8.2,” there is a “drivers” folder.
Note: Since the “Include subfolders” option is selected, you only need to specify the location of the drivers folder. The computer or laptop will automatically select the appropriate driver from this folder. If you prefer to select the individual driver file, locate and choose the “arduino.inf” file within the drivers folder.
6. After selecting the drivers folder, click “Next.” The computer or laptop will begin installing the driver. If a window appears, as shown in the image below, click “Install” to proceed.
7. The installation process may take some time. Once the driver is successfully installed, a window will appear, as shown in the image below.
Click “Close.”
- Go back to the Device Manager. The device previously listed as “Unknown Device” under “Other devices” will no longer be there. Instead, you will see a new device with the name of the board you installed the driver for (e.g., Arduino Uno) listed under “Ports (COM and LPT).”
9. Now, open the IDE and either open an example sketch or create a new one. Under the “Tools” tab, you will see the installed device listed in the “Port” option, as shown below.
Next, select the board you are using from the list of available boards under the “Tools” tab.
Finally, choose “AVRISP mkII” as the programmer from the list of programmers under the “Tools” tab.
10. The device driver has been successfully installed, and the board is now ready to use. Simply open the sketch you want to run or write your own application sketch, then upload it to the board.