Metro Mini Not Connecting to Mac

Please tell us which board you are using.
For CircuitPython issues, ask in the Adafruit CircuitPython forum.

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
mumm8890
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:12 pm

Metro Mini Not Connecting to Mac

Post by mumm8890 »

Hello,

I cannot get my Adafruit Metro Mini 5v to connect to my 2015 MacBook Pro (macOS Big Sur 11.4). When the board is connected to the USB on my Mac, the power LED turns green and the pin 13 LED begins to blink in a steady motion. I have installed the Silicon Labs CP210x VCP Driver (Version 6.0.1), however when I type "ls /dev/cu.*" in terminal, it does not show any USB device as a port. Please help me. Why is my computer not seeing the Metro Mini?

User avatar
adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67446
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Metro Mini Not Connecting to Mac

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

As a 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 that have USB connectors at both ends, but no wires for the data signals.

Just swapping cables has no diagnostic value. The current record is someone who had to try ten different cables before finding one that made a data connection. You need the positive evidence of a working USB connection to rule out a charge-only cable.

User avatar
mumm8890
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:12 pm

Re: Metro Mini Not Connecting to Mac

Post by mumm8890 »

I tried a third cord and that made the connection. Thank you for confirming my idea, that the cords were "charge only" cords.

User avatar
adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67446
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Metro Mini Not Connecting to Mac

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Glad to hear you got it working.

Cut the charge-only cords in half and throw them away.. not only do they make it harder to use USB, they usually aren’t even good power cables. I’ve seen ones that had more than 1V of line loss at 200mA. Besides, it feel good to make sure a problematic device won’t ever cause problems again.

The official term is ‘Widlarizing’, named for the IC design wizard Bob Widlar. Any time he found a dead or damaged component that had cost him a couple hours of debugging, he’d calmly take it to the bench vise in the shop, put it on the anvil, and pound it to dust with a hammer.

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Metro, Metro Express, and Grand Central Boards”