Silicon Labs VCP Driver

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lifelike
 
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Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by lifelike »

I'm running High Sierra, so maybe that's my problem, but I can not get both v5 and v4 of the CP2104USB driver to work. But do I even need it if I just want to connect my Bluefruit nRF52 Feather to connect to a couple sensors and send data back to my computer? Is it possible to upload sketches via Bluetooth?

thanks
Matt

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

You can't upload firmware by Bluetooth. The bootloader only knows how to read data from the Serial port.

Try connecting the Feather without installing a driver and see if that works.

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lifelike
 
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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by lifelike »

Thanks for the reply. With or without the driver, I do not see the serial port for the connection. It's plugged in for sure.

Matt

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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Okay, next sanity check: verify your USB cable by using it to connect some other, known-working device to the computer.

There's a plague of charge-only cables out there with USB connectors at both ends but no wires for the data signals. We see people get caught by them every day, and it's normal for them to say they had to try three or four cables before finding one that actually carried data.

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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by jbink »

Were you ever able to resolve this issue? I have tried both the V4 and V5 driver on my High Sierra 10.13.4 MacBook Pro (2017) with several different USB cables, including the one you ship with Micro.bit. The only USB ports that I are: /dev/cu.MALS, /dev/cu.SOC, /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port, and /dev/cu.Airpods-WirelessiAP1.

I wonder if this might somehow be related to the usb-c connection conversion required on the newer MacBooks?

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lifelike
 
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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by lifelike »

OK found a cable that worked. Was able to load an arduino sketch. My question now is how do i get serial data back? I want to send the serial data to a Processing sketch. I can't find any tutorial.

Matt

jbink: I guess I got lucky with the cable. It's some random cable that came with some headphones I got last year. And i have a USB-C MacBook pro.

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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

The nRF52 supports Serial.print() just like an Arduino Uno.

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jbink
 
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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by jbink »

After numerous attempts with various Micro USB cables, I finally figure out that the problem was that the VPC driver (SiLabsUSBDriver.kext) was not starting because of Security & Privacy settings regarding where apps are downloaded from in the System Preferences. After I indicated that it was OK to use the driver, the port shows up in the Arduino ports list.

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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Interesting.. what settings or dialog did you use to tell the OS it was okay to use the driver?

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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by jbink »

I can't repeat it now, since the permission has already been granted.

But, I think my experience was similar to the situation describe in the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsVd9kRgFo4

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miniHUEY
 
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Re: Silicon Labs VCP Driver

Post by miniHUEY »

Ha. USB cable was only power. That solved my problem too. Never been so pissed and relieved. Thanks for the advice!

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