Howto use OSX with Synapse RF Engine
This is an howto setup the Synapse RF Engine application called Portal to work with OSX. I first went to the Synapse Forum and noticed there was multiple people having issue with this so I thought I would share how I fixed this to work with osx.
NOTE: Unfortunately you will need an working instance of the Portal application + Synapse drivers working on a Windows machine (I used windows vista as it came with my dell laptop a few years back).
So fire up the windows machine and open portal. You should see something like this.
Once here click the command button disconnect button (if you are connected to the bridge). See below:
Next, we need to get to the command prompt to enable the RF Engine to act like an VCP (Virtual COM Port). See Image below.
Enter the command:
root.setup_usb_as_vcp()
And then hit enter. Your Windows machine should make the sound of an USB device being unplugged then plugged in. Your RF Engine is now setup to be used as a Virtual COM Port. If you want this to work now in your Windows enviroment you need to download the Silabs VCP driver for your flavor of windows. Or you can re-enable the RF engine in USB mode by issuing the:
root.setupSynapseUsb()
Command.
Now you are ready to move to the Mac platform. So take your USB Stick + RF engine and plug it into your mac. Nothing happens… So you need to download the Silabs drivers for OSX. So go here and scroll down to the Mac section. Download / Run them like any other osx application. Next open a terminal and type:
ls /dev/cu.*
You should see something like this I assume.
The /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART is what we are after. So copy this and fire up Portal.
***Make sure you rebooted after you installed the OSX Silabs VCP drivers of this will fail!
Now click the connect button and you should see something like this above. Just paste in the /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART (or whatever it looks like on your setup) and it should connect.
