FTDI drivers on OSX reap havoc with USB ports

In order to update the firmware on pycom.io’s Lopy development boards you need to install the FTDI Virtual COM port drivers (shasum b57377e10de1c8ae9ddaffa147e4cc529c3571b512bba4798b2b6054d4fabd92) for OSX.

After an indeterminate amount of time my left USB port on my Macbook Air stopped working properly. If I listed the USB devices on the system :

system_profiler SPUSBDataType

The device would be listed yet the device details would not be present (and would not work

To solve this issue you basically need to remove the driver (I will just use the serial port on my raspberry pi or something like that

cd /Library/Extensions

sudo rm -rf FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext

sudo pkgutil — forget com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver

and then reboot. Removal instructions credit Stack Exchange https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/166906/how-can-i-uninstall-the-ftdiusbserialdriver

Hopefully this will help someone who is having issues with their USB port after installing FTDI serial / virtual com port drivers!