Guide: Install CP2102 driver

The USB-serial requires a CP2102 driver installed on your laptop. Most recent macOS and Windows ship with the necessary driver pre-installed. Howevef, if you have an older Windows OS, you may need to manually install the driver.

Manual install CP2012 driver if on older Windows

Is your Windows version v11 or newer? If so, you should have CP2102 support out of the box. Skip over this section and do not install the Silicon Labs driver.

  1. Installing the CP2102 driver is done from Windows (not inside the WSL terminal). Switch to your Windows web browser and go to the Silicon Labs CP210x Downloads page.
  2. Select the "Downloads" tab and find "CP210x Windows Drivers v6.7.6". Download this zip file.

    Be sure to choose version 6.7.6! Don't be confused by other drivers with similar names and slightly different version numbers. The version to download is exactly CP210x Windows Drivers v6.7.6.

  3. Extract all files from the downloaded zip file. Look in the uncompressed folder for the installer exe file that matches the architecture of your laptop. If your laptop is 64-bit, the installer exe is named CP210xVCPInstaller_x64.exe. If 32-bit, it is CP210xVCPInstaller_x86.exe.
    • If you are not sure whether your laptop is 32 or 64-bit, use command dpkg --print-architecture in your WSL terminal and look for a response of amd64 (64-bit) or i386 (32-bit).
  4. Run the installer exe file and follow its instructions.

Confirm CP2102 driver finds USB-serial device

Plug in the usb-serial into a USB port or USB hub on your laptop and confirm it can be found.

Using find-dev.sh

We wrote a litte script find-dev.sh to look for the USB device whose id matches CP2102. The script prints the device path if found, otherwise it reports an error.

In the example below, the first command did not find the usb-serial because it was not connected or was switched off. If you try again after reconnecting, find-dev should print the device path. Note that your device path may be different than the one shown below.

$ find-dev.sh
Could not find CP2102 serial device.
I looked through the serial devices on this computer, and did not
find a device associated with a CP2102 USB-serial adapter. Is
your USB-serial adapter plugged in?

$ find-dev.sh
/dev/cu.usbserial-0001

There are other ways to find the device path (lsusb -v on linux, diff files in ls /dev directory when CP2102 plugged in and again when not, …) Ask if you need help with one of these methods.

If you are not able to find the device, your drivers likely did not install correctly, grab a TA for some help!

Check: confirm CP2102 driver finds device