Troubleshoot Silicon Labs Driver For RF Explorer on MacOS

For the application software to recognize and communicate with your RF Explorer device a software driver is required, and in this particularly case it is the software driver from Silicon Labs.

After downloading and mounting the *.dmg file, two steps are required to properly install the application:
1. Install the application software — drag the icon for the application to the icon for the Applications folder.
2. Install the Silicon Labs driver — click on the icon for the Silicon Labs driver.

After installing both the application and Silicon labs driver you can then attach the RF Explorer device to your MacOS machine. To verify the driver is installed, open a Terminal window and navigate to the directory ‘/dev’. When the RF Explorer is attached, then the MacOS will load the correct driver. The name of the driver is ‘/dev/tty.SLAB.USBtoUART’. When you detach the device then the MacOS unloads the driver and that file no longer appears.

The first time the software application launches it checks for the presence of the RF Explorer device. If the application detects the device then it prompts for the corresponding software license key. If the application does not detect the device then it runs in demo mode. If the Silicon Labs software driver is not properly installed then the application will not detect the RF Explorer device.

If the Silicon Labs software driver appears to be properly installed, yet the application still does not detect the RF Explorer device, then there are several things you can check that affect the application’s ability to communicate with the RF Explorer device:
1. Make sure the RF Explorer device is actively scanning — that is, you did NOT press the ‘Menu’ button and are NOT navigating the built-in menus via the LCD screen.
2. The USB Baud rate is set to 500 Kbps (and NOT 2.4 Kbps).
3. If your RF Explorer device supports a ‘WiFi Analyzer’ mode then make sure it is not currently using that mode.
4. Ensure the driver is properly installed (see above).
5. Bad USB cable — it does happen a lot. Not all USB cables are created equal. The application requires a USB cable that supports *BOTH* data and power. Some USB cables only support power.
6. Bad USB port — try a different USB port or MacOS machine.