I noticed the last few days that Simhub was using a large amount of CPU when I'm just sitting on my desktop. I started watching it closely and it's using 34% CPU every 5 seconds, enough that it spools my fans up then goes back to 0% over 2-3 seconds then repeats non-stop. I was on a 9.5.x version and then just updated to 9.6 today and the issue remains. It has caused lag in desktop applications such as Chrome when attempting to close a tab or even just click within while this occurs. I've had Simhub a few years now and don't recall this ever occurring before.
Hi !
If you are using arduinos with fake CH340 chips this is a symptom of the latest CH340 driver delivered since a few days through windows update, you can find more details and a fix here : https://github.com/SHWotever/FakeCH340DriverFixer
Appreciate the incredibly quick response, this was driving me crazy! It appears I must have some LEDs with that chip which are directly plugged into my rigs monitor so that's not always on which is why I must not have really noticed it for a bit.
Attempting the installation of what you had linked. Is it normal for the "Looking for pending updates..." step to take a bit or should that be instant?
Edit: Guess even with that step sitting at "Looking..." the fix must have worked. Simhub is open and not randomly ramping up so far. Thanks so much! Was ready to spend all day googling my rear off.
@threash For some necessary clarity: It's not your LED's, it's the Arduino. The clones tend to come with a different serial-bridge than the official ones.
The official ones come with the Atmel 16u2 serial-bridge chip, a square, QFN32 or VQFP32 package type of chip.
The CH340 chip is available in a variety of packages, and are typically rectangular in shape. It is not uncommon for clones to carry this chip without any print on it: these are probably CH340's that did not meet quality control by the original manufacturer and got discarded before they got their print.
While CH340 USB-to-UART chips are not necessarily "counterfeit" options, they do tend to be seen a lot in the clones of Arduino's that you can buy and deviate from the original Arduino's design set out by the manufacturer of the original boards.
The ATMEGA16U2-AUR that I have seen on my Arduino's almost always, come at a price of 2,57 euro's when ordering a reel containing 2000 of them at Mouser.
Mouser unfortunately does not sell the CH340 chip as a separate component (which might give us some accidental insight into the sensitive nature of the design requirements of the PCB around it for it to function properly).
Because of this I can not make a price comparison between the two, but given the nature of counterfeit/clone options that deviate from the design that they bought or literally reverse-engineered (because that also saves money), you can be sure that the CH340 bridge chip is cheaper than the Atmel16u2.
@busdriver Appreciate the additional insight on how the cheaper version probably comes into existence. Makes sense and I do understand why someone would go that route. Fairly certain two of my matching pieces that they drive the LEDs for are using the non 'official' chip and possibly a third. They were purchased from sellers on Etsy so I do get why they tried to save a few bucks and until now it hadn't been an issue so no harm in it generally. At least now I know what to look out for, probably need to find an app to monitor CPU usage. The next morning after I had posted this Windows ran an update overnight so I had to run that file once again to solve but didn't notice immediately.