Raspberry Pi USB-GPIO OS X and FreeBSD

I play with my Raspberry Pi so rarely that I forget how to use my CP2102 serial converter to connect from my iMac or FreeBSD laptop to the Raspberry Pi, so I thought I’d write a blog post and then I’d have an easy place to go back to remember how…

Connecting the cables

Raspberry Pi Model B connected to USB—UART Adaptor. Click for bigger image.

On a Mac

1. Acquire a CP2102 serial converter
2. Download the driver (direct link to zip file)
3. Reboot
4. Attach Raspberry Pi using a USB 2.0 or older port (not USB 3)
5. Open up Terminal.app and type: screen -fn /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART 115200 The fn flag disables flow-control And you’re done!

On FreeBSD

1. Acquire a CP2102 serial converter

2. Load uslcom.ko—either add it to loader.conf, compile it into the kernel, or as root do: kldload uslcom.ko

3. Attach Raspberry Pi via any USB port

4. Open up a terminal and as root (or via sudo), type: cu -l /dev/ttyU0 -s 115200

And you’re done!