After installing both drivers for the board on MacOS - I get an error with meshtastic command

Support
1

On MacOS 12.3.1, I installed both the CP210X driver and the CH34X driver. I installed ONLY the CP210X first, but esphome couldn’t flash the board. With JUST the CP210X driver, all I could see for a port was /dev/cu.usbmodem53190123241. I had to also install the CH34X driver, THEN I could flash the board from my Mac via USB using the new port that showed up /dev/cu.wchusbserial53190123241

However, now when I just issue “meshtastic” at the command line, I get a series of errors:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/meshtastic”, line 5, in
from meshtastic.main import main
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/init.py”, line 80, in
from meshtastic.node import Node
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/node.py”, line 7, in
from meshtastic import portnums_pb2, apponly_pb2, admin_pb2, channel_pb2
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/portnums_pb2.py”, line 20, in
_PORTNUM = DESCRIPTOR.enum_types_by_name[‘PortNum’]
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘enum_types_by_name’

If I issue “meshtastic --info” it gives more errors:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/meshtastic”, line 5, in
from meshtastic.main import main
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/init.py”, line 80, in
from meshtastic.node import Node
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/node.py”, line 7, in
from meshtastic import portnums_pb2, apponly_pb2, admin_pb2, channel_pb2
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/portnums_pb2.py”, line 20, in
_PORTNUM = DESCRIPTOR.enum_types_by_name[‘PortNum’]
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘enum_types_by_name’
tim@iMac27 ~ % meshtastic --info
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/meshtastic”, line 5, in
from meshtastic.main import main
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/init.py”, line 80, in
from meshtastic.node import Node
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/node.py”, line 7, in
from meshtastic import portnums_pb2, apponly_pb2, admin_pb2, channel_pb2
File “/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/meshtastic/portnums_pb2.py”, line 20, in
_PORTNUM = DESCRIPTOR.enum_types_by_name[‘PortNum’]
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘enum_types_by_name’

Using “meshtastic --info” worked fine when ONLY the CP210X driver was installed. Do I need to remove the CP210X driver now, since the CH340 driver is needed for flashing the board?

2

On the M1 at least I can’t have both. It is somewhat unlikely that you need the 210 driver at this point, has probably been a year since any tbeams sold with that chip.

3

Not an M1 - iMac Pro with Xeon

4

Uninstalling the driver just gives an error. I tried uninstalling meshtastic, protobuf, blackboxprotobuf and esptool.

Then reinstalled meshtastic and esptool - that seems to have fixed things and back to “normal”

5

What is the blackboxprotobuf about? You really should not have to install anything protobuf related manually unless you are going to be doing dev work with them. You installed python3 and the python CLI? (there is also a Mac app, but I think you mean the python CLI?)

6

I installed the Python CLI - not sure what blackboxprotobuf is about either, but it existed in the environment, and removing protobug did NOT remove the other. So I cleaned things out, recalling most of what got installed when installing meshtastic, to reinstall meshtastic