Arduino IDE doesn't pick up serial ports

Question

I am fairly new to Arduinos and I recently bought a nodeMCU Amica esp2866 for this tutorial. I have my board connected to my MacBook Air (10.14.5 with Mojave) and only the "/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port" is the only one that shows up.

I am using a basic USB cord to connect the board to my MacBook and I know the cable isn't broken because I have used it in the recent past. If anyone knows how to fix this problem or has run into this problem in the past, please let me know. Let me know if you'd like anymore information. Thank you!

Answer 1

The MAC / Arduino install instructions appear to be here.

If your Arduino (possibly a NodeMCU 1.0 version board) is using the CP210x chip set there appears to be a download page here.

If your Arduino (possibly a NodeMCU 0.9 version board) is using the ch340g, ch34g or ch34x chip set there appears to be an effort to create a Mac OS X driver here.

The install instructions from that github page are as follows:

Installation

Unplug any CH34* devices.
Unload the old drivers if running:
    sudo kextunload /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext
    sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/usb.kext
Remove the old driver by issuing one of the following commands (depending on your installation):
    sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/usb.kext
    sudo rm -rf /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext
Double-click on the CH34x_Install_V1.5.pkg file and install (no need to reboot)
Instead of rebooting, you can force quit Installer after it completes.
Load the new driver:
    sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext
Plug in your device. It should now be listed under the /dev directory. Examples:
    /dev/cu.wchusbserial1410
    /dev/tty.wchusbserial14210 (driver version 1.5)