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SportIdent USB stations on macOS ​

Audience: Timing operators using a SportIdent USB station on a Mac.

On macOS, a SportIdent USB station needs a driver from Silicon Labs before the browser can see it at all. This page covers the symptom, why it happens, how to install the driver, and the one step in that installer that looks like a failure but isn't.

Applies to: SportIdent's USB reader stations — the BSM7-USB and BSM8-USB (SportIdent call the BSM8-USB the mini Reader) — on macOS, in any browser that can use Web Serial (Chrome, Edge or Firefox 151+). The missing driver is a macOS problem, not a browser one, so changing browser doesn't help. It's the same reader whether you're downloading cards or reading a control's backup memory. Windows and Linux are unaffected — see Do Windows and Linux need this? below.

Note — control stations (BSF8, BSF9) aren't affected. A station you put out in the forest has no USB connection to the Mac. You read and program it through the USB reader, sat on the reader or coupled to it — so the driver is about the reader on your desk, not the units on your course.

The symptom ​

The station is plugged in and powered, but it never appears in the browser's serial-port chooser when you click Select Device on the Download Card page. The chooser is empty, or lists only unrelated ports.

Why it happens ​

SportIdent's USB stations use a Silicon Labs CP210x USB-to-UART bridge chip, but they identify themselves with SportIdent's own USB product ID (10C4:800A) rather than the standard Silicon Labs one. The CP210x driver built into macOS only recognises the standard Silicon Labs IDs, so it never attaches to the station and no serial port (/dev/cu.*) is created for it.

The bridge chip is what matters here, not the model number: SportIdent use the same CP210x family across their USB stations and USB accessories, so the fix below is the same whichever one you plug in.

Web Serial can only offer up real serial ports. With no driver attached there is no port, so the station is invisible to the browser — even though it does show up as a USB device in System Information.

Install the Silicon Labs CP210x driver ​

  1. Download the CP210x VCP Driver for macOS from Silicon Labs: https://www.silabs.com/software-and-tools/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers. (Verified working with driver v6.0.3, which includes the SportIdent product ID.)
  2. Open the downloaded installer and follow its steps.

The installer will appear to hang — this is expected ​

At the Installing new driver… step the progress bar stops and never completes. The installer is not stuck. It is waiting for you to approve the driver in macOS System Settings, and macOS often shows no prompt asking you to do it. Re-running the installer doesn't help.

To approve the driver:

  1. Open System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions.
  2. Scroll past the "Allow in the Background" list to the Extensions section.
  3. Find Driver Extensions and click its ⓘ (info) button.
  4. In the sheet that opens, switch on CP210x VCP Driver (com.silabs.cp210x) and authenticate with your password.
  5. The installer window then continues past "Installing new driver…" on its own.

Warning: A Silicon Laboratories Inc toggle may appear in the Allow in the Background list. That is not the driver approval — keep scrolling to Extensions.

Tip: If you already force-quit the installer, that's fine. The approval is the part that matters; there's no need to run the installer again.

If there's no Driver Extensions entry, or the sheet is empty, reboot — the pending approval survives a restart and the toggle will be there afterwards.

On macOS Sequoia and earlier, the approval lives in System Settings → Privacy & Security instead, as an Allow button near the bottom.

Check it worked ​

  1. Unplug and replug the station.

  2. A new serial port named /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART should now exist. To confirm, open Terminal and run:

    bash
    ls /dev/cu.*

  3. Back in the browser, click Select Device again. The chooser now lists the station — shown as CP210x USB to UART Bridge Controller / cu.SLAB_USBtoUART. Select it, and downloads work normally from then on.

The driver install and its approval are a one-time setup per Mac. New stations plugged into the same Mac are picked up without repeating any of it.

Do Windows and Linux need this? ​

No.

  • Windows — SportIdent supply a driver for their stations; install that and the station appears as a COM port.
  • Linux — this product ID is supported out of the box; the station appears as /dev/ttyUSB* with nothing to install.

Only macOS needs the manual driver install described above.