ESP32 Module does not Register as Serial Port

Arduino / By /

Problem: You plug in a NodeMCU ESP32 board (from BerryBase in my case) to you computer, but no USB serial port is registered in /dev/. lsusb shows a device called “VeriFone USB to UART Bridge Controller” instead of the expected “CP2102/CP2109 UART Bridge Controller”

# lsusb 
Bus 005 Device 008: ID 11ca:0204 VeriFone Inc VeriFone USB to UART Bridge Controller

In this case Ardunio Studio cannot find the module.

Solution: thanks to: https://blog.manzelseet.com/fixing-cp2102-with-custom-vidpid.html

I seems that BerryBase ships some of these modules with wrong configuration. A quick run through of the Solution in Manzel’s Blog that worked for me:

--- find the current vid:pid (11ca:0204 in my case)
lsusb
--- make linux recognize the module:
modprobe cp210x
echo 11ca 0204 > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/cp210x/new_id
--- replug the module and check if the serial port exists
ls /dev/ttyUSB*
--- change its configuration
git clone https://github.com/DiUS/cp210x-cfg
cd cp210x-cfg
apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev
make
./cp210x-cfg -m 11ca:0204 -V 0x10C4 -P 0xEA60
--- replug an check if the VID:PID is correct
lsusb

This changed the vender ID and product ID of the cp210x chip to the normal values: 10c4:ea60.