Virtual COM port on Windows

I’ve been having some trouble with the ODrive drivers on Windows. When I use a Linux machine, the drivers for the board make it appear as a virtual COM port, which makes communication easy. On Windows, I’ve been unsuccessful trying to install and use ST’s VCP drivers, and I’ve only been able to use it as a USB device. Has anyone figured how to deal with this?

So I don’t have very much data on this (maybe we should do a poll or something), but I found:

  • On Windows 10 you don’t need to install anything, you plug in the ODrive and you get a COM port straight away.
  • Same thing on Linux: it just works.
  • On Windows 7 (and earlier I guess), it refuses to work, and ST’s VCP drivers don’t help.

Switching to libusb and using pyusb (aka using python), works in all cases. On Windows, to use libusb, you need to manually switch it using Zadig, as explained here.

It would be great if we can make the CDC (Communication Device Class) (aka virtual COM port) work on Win7, and work more reliably on Win10 (it’s had some reliability problems). I haven’t been able to do it, but if someone manages to get it to work, please please consider pushing it back upstream.