LIRC on Mac via MacPorts - no /dev/lirc0

So I have LIRC 0.9.4d installed on macOS Sierra via MacPorts, and the
install ran w/o any issues or errors.

My goals are just to record a couple of button presses from a remote and
then send them out (automating the send via my smart home server).

Anyways, I haven't done anything to the default config, and when I try to
fire up irrecord (with the appropriate params so it won't complain)...it
says that /dev/lirc0 doesn't exist and thus can't run.

After running through a lot of the forums, I can't seem to find an answer
to this. I tried a reboot, but that didn't help. My Mac does successfully
see the device ( IRDroid USB from
https://www.irdroid.com/irdroid-usb-ir-transceiver/ ) and I can get the
details in System Info, but without /dev/lirc0 being established, I seem to
be stuck.

While I know my way around "UNIX" relatively ok and I used to be an app
developer, I'm just kind of lost here on what steps to take to debug this.
I have not yet setup LIRC to run at system startup...is that something I'm
missing here? (Doubtful) I've seen other posts where LIRC has to be stopped
so that it will free up the port for irrecord, etc. Anyways, it just seems
like something else has to be run or config'd to get the port to show up.

Thanks for any help!

--Joe