A simple command line programmer tool for interfacing with ch341a under Linux and macOS.

There are a lot of cheap SPI/IIC programmers based on ch341a which can be bought online for as low as $3. However, there were no Linux-based tools associated with the hardware; the best I could find was a tool called ch341eepromtool (original link dead), which could only deal with IIC EEPROMs. So, I decided to write my own.

After reading the source for ch341eeprom and sniffing the USB traffic, I believe I have fully understood the USB protocol. Here is what I have got so far.

Special thanks to asbokid, the ch341eepromtool's author. Please see the CONTRIBUTORS file for a full list of people who helped build this.

To build the project, simply run: make

This is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

• Reading an 8M flash (W25Q64) took 63 seconds
• Writing to an 8M flash (W25Q64) took 86 seconds

To ensure the CH341 programmer is set up with proper permissions on a Linux computer, run the following command to install a udev rule file into /etc/udev/rules.d:

sudo make install-udev-rule