will_j posted this picture of his Bus Pirate in use as a transparent USB->serial bridge to a Wavecom GSM modem.
Thanks for the tip!
Sjaak posted this demo of a KS0074 serial LCD in the forum:
I needed to test the SPI library with the newterm branch. I had a nice display from a dead Siemens phone. It uses a KS0074 display (which is an sort of SPI version of the good old HD44780). I found the datasheet and some example code on the internet (sorry only German is available). During the testing I found out the Bus Pirate spits out the bits the other way around then in the code/datasheet.
Demo: is a weekly series that demonstrates devices with the Bus Pirate. Come back next Monday for another new demo.
We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. PCBs by Seeed Studio.
This is another prototype PCB for the USB infrared remote control receiver/transmitter. Unlike the earlier prototype, this version uses a USB mini-B jack. Unlike the final PCB, it doesn’t have a transistor to power the IR LED with greater than 20mA. The IR receiver is connected to a single interrupt pin, the receiver on the final version of the IR Toy connects to an additional interrupt pin with a Schmitt trigger for better noise immunity.
You can get an assembled USB IR Toy for $20, including worldwide shipping.
We’re giving away two PCBs this week, this is the second. Just ask for it in the comments.
We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. PCBs by Seeed Studio.
This is the final version of the PCB for the USB infrared remote control receiver/transmitter. This IR hacking tool can visualize infrared signals on a Java logic analyzer, record and replay infrared signals, and decode them.
You can get an assembled USB IR Toy for $20, including worldwide shipping.
We’re giving away two PCBs this week, one now, and one later today. Just ask for it in the comments.
s3c is tantalizing us with this mystery EEPROM device. It’s a small I2C EEPROM data storage chip, and it appears to be powered parasitically from the I2C clock line.
Was bored today so I opened a dongle I had laying around. It only contains an I2C eeprom and a couple of passives but it’s pretty smart, it uses a diode and capacitor to power the eeprom from the eeprom clock line.
Anyone have an idea what the resistors R1 and R4 are for? I’m assuming PIN1 and PIN2 are connected to Vcc through external resistors and are connected as SDA and SCL for normal I2C operation.
We’ll send a free PCB to the poster with the most persuasive explanation of the circuit.
Torsten got tired of looking up the Bus Pirate IO table in the manual, so he made this handy spec and pin reference card:
Please find attached my version of a quick reference card. The information is, due to the limitation of the sheet not very much. I tried to get the most important infos on it.
It is a LaTeX-file based on the pgf/tikz package. I documented the file in a way that even a LaTeX-novice should be able to modify the colour code to his needs. I created this card with the pcb-board of the Bus Pirate V3 in mind. It will fit exactly under the pcb and thus people can stick it there by double sided tape or whatever.
Anyhow, any changes and suggestions are welcome. I published it under GNU Free Documentation License, thus you can do whatever you like with it.
Thanks for the tip!
See also ecronin’s case sticker, and the new pin reference card category. We’ll keep openly-licensed reference cards in the documents folder of the SVN, feel free to contribute yours.
We’ve been working on an open source logic analyzer prototype with Jack Gassett of the Gadget Factory. The project is currently known by the code name ‘SUMP-PUMP’, but you can help suggest a name. The design incorporates elements of the Butterfly platform, which is available now at the Gadget Factory.
On Wednesday we offered a free SUMP PUMP to the developer of a command line utility that could replace our Perl script ROM uploader. Michal Demin completed the challenge in less than 24hours. Piotr and Ipenguin helped with patches for the Mac. Congratulations, and thanks for the hard work!
Michal will receive a preview SUMP PUMP. You can try the app here.
There are reports of web platform deliveries in the forum, so we thought this would be a good time for an introduction to dsPIC33 programming.
This introduction aims to help you start writing and compiling your own applications for the web platform. We cover lots of basics like toggling pins, configuration bits, clock settings, and peripheral setup.
The example application will allow you to control the web platform indicator LEDs from a serial terminal, but it can be expanded for lots of other uses too.
Assembled web platforms are available at Seeed Studio now for $40, including worldwide shipping.
We’ve been working on an open source logic analyzer prototype with Jack Gassett of the Gadget Factory. The project is currently known by the code name ‘SUMP-PUMP’, but you can help suggest a name. The design incorporates elements of the Butterfly platform, which is available now at the Gadget Factory.
Update: Michal Demin completed this challenge in less than 24hours. Congratulations!
Here’s your chance to get a SUMP PUMP for free, maybe even a preview unit. We need command line utilities to update the SUMP PUMP FPGA image from Windows, Mac, and Linux. We’re currently using a Perl script, but this is too much hassle for end users. If you develop the best console update utility, we’ll send you the SUMP PUMP hardware.
The update is done over a virtual serial port using a simple protocol. Ideally, the utility would load Intel HEX files directly, but we have raw binary blobs too. The utility must compile on all major platforms (Windows, MacOSX, and Linux). Piotr’s Pirate-Loader utility source code should have everything you need to get started. Here’s a development thread in the forum.
Daniel Garcia, a friend of Dangerous Prototypes, released version 1.4 of the Protostack development board for ATMEGA8 and ATMEGA128. We really like the Protostack concept: it’s a general purpose development board that incorporates user feedback. It demonstrates the minimum circuit to get a 28pin AVR chip working, and has a large prototyping area to implement your own designs.
I released a new version of my 28 pin AVR board. The new version (1.4) has 4 improvements over the previous version (1.3):
- Addition of power supply section
- ISP-6 interface is now 2×3 pin instead of 1×6 pin
- Addition of IDC/Double row header section
- Clearer labeling of power buses
We have a v1.3 board, we’ll demonstrate it with the Bus Pirate soon. The v1.4 board includes a voltage regulator section, which makes it a very well rounded development platform for $15-$20, including shipping.
will_j posted a Bus Pirate script that controls a Sure Electronics 8×32 LED marquee:
Here’s a quick and dirty perl script to display ‘BPv3′ on a Sure Electronics 8×32 LEd Matrix display.
You can also use a 16×24 display if you change the second command code to 44 from 40.
Any improvements gratefully received – i.e. a nice character lookup table process would be good!
View a copy in the Bus Pirate scripts folder. We demonstrated a slightly different Sure LED matrix a in a demo: post a few weeks ago.
Thanks for the tip!
The HMC6352 is a simple compass chip with an I2C interface. If your next unmanned vehicle needs a compass, check out this chip. It has multiple operating modes that balance power use and update frequency. Continuous acquisition provides rapid heading updates, while query acquisitions save power by only measuring only when it’s needed.
Thanks to SparkFun for sending this part to demo. If you don’t want to solder the 24pin lead-less chip yourself, you can get it on a breakout board at SparkFun.
Demo: is a weekly series that demonstrates devices with the Bus Pirate. Come back next Monday for another all new demo.
You can preorder assembled Bus Pirate hardware at Seeed Studio for $30, including worldwide shipping.
We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. PCBs by Seeed Studio.
This is the final version of the PCB for the USB infrared remote control receiver/transmitter. This IR hacking tool can visualize infrared signals on a Java logic analyzer, record and replay infrared signals, and decode them.
You can get an assembled USB IR Toy for $20, including worldwide shipping.
We’re giving away two PCBs this week, this is the second. Just ask for it in the comments.
We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. PCBs by Seeed Studio.
This is the final version of the PCB for the USB infrared remote control receiver/transmitter. This IR hacking tool can visualize infrared signals on a Java logic analyzer, record and replay infrared signals, and decode them.
You can get an assembled USB IR Toy for $20, including worldwide shipping.
We’re giving away two PCBs this week, one now, and one later today. Just ask for it in the comments.
We’ve been working on an open source logic analyzer prototype with Jack Gassett of the Gadget Factory. The project is currently known by the code name ‘SUMP-PUMP’, but you can help suggest a name. The design incorporates elements of the Butterfly platform, which is available now at the Gadget Factory.
Jack finished a bunch of tests on the first SUMP PUMP build, check out the pictures and screen shots.
We’ve got the PIC firmware working, but there’s still an issue with the bootloader. You can follow our progress and make suggestions in the forum.
Infrared remote controls are ubiquitous, they’re used everywhere but we don’t give them much thought. The goal of this project is to investigate the invisible signals emitted by remote controls.
This IR hacking tool can visualize infrared signals on a Java logic analyzer, record and replay infrared signals, and decode them. USB infrared remote control receiver transmitter is a mouthful, so we just call it the USB IR Toy.
- Control your computer with a remote using the IR decoder mode
- Visualize IR remote signals on a PC logic analyzer
- Raw IR IO mode receives, transmits, and clones IR signals
- Play the TV-B-Gone TV POWER codes
- USB upgradable
- Open source code and hardware
You can get an assembled USB IR Toy for $20, including worldwide shipping. Seeed Studio is currently hosting a preorder. The hardware will be manufactured the first week of February, but it might not get packed and shipped until later in February due to the Chinese New Year holiday.
Read about the design after the break.
Keep your Bus Pirate pins straight with this case sticker[PDF!] designed by ecronin:
I made up a sticker for the combo of the seeed case and breakout harness, thought others might find it useful… Unlike in the above picture, I connect the cable with Black to GND, which puts the two EZHook-like hooks on MISO/MOSI. Thought others might find it handy. It also includes the LED names and a gratuitous barcode since the project lacks a real logo.
Thanks for the link!
Tired of the /dev/tty.usbserial-XXXXXXXX address of the Bus Pirate? Piotr developed a utility to edit the EEROM in the FTDI chip on the Bus Pirate, this gives your Bus Pirate a consistent name on MacOSX. Grab the utility here, and follow this how-to submitted by Piotr. Thanks for the tip!
If you have a few FTDI USB devices in your system it might be confusing which /dev/tty.usbserial-XXXXXXXX points to the correct device, as the default isn’t very meaningful. Luckily with MacOSX and the FTDI USB to serial drivers there’s an easy way to change that!
The FT232R uses an internal EEPROM memory to store chip configuration. Programming it lets you change values such as PID, VID, Required Current, CBUS pins config, … and USB device description, which is what we want to change.
By default your Bus Pirate is detected as FTDI, FT232R USB UART with some random serial number like A600blSc. We can change it to anything, up to 46 ASCII characters, and get our device named the way we want. There are Windows tools for this available on FTDI Chip site, but there was none for MacOSX. Since playing with the EEPROM can render your FT232R useless, or at least make you unsolder it, I thought a simple tool which won’t let you break the device would be useful.
That’s why I wrote the Pirate Rename utility. It uses a modified open source library called libftdi-1.0 to talk to the FTDI chip and libusb-1.0.0. They are both embedded in the application bundle so you don’t need to worry about it.
Today we completed an initial PIC firmware for the open source logic analyzer. The PIC has two operating modes: a serial bridge for SUMP to talk to the client on the FPGA, and a ROM programmer that updates the AT45DB041D flash chip with new logic for the FPGA. There’s still some bugs, but the design is coming together. Give your suggestions and follow our progress in the forum.
Major to dos:
- Finish the USB bootloader port to 18f24j50
- Clean and comment the PIC source
- Clean up the PERL updater scripts
This demo is what the Bus Pirate is all about. A AT45DB041D 4Mbit flash memory stores the FPGA design on the open source logic analyzer project currently known as SUMP PUMP. We’ve worked with EEPROMs in the past, but this chip is a different beast.
Follow along as we use the Bus Pirate to learn about this chip before writing firmware for the logic analyzer.
Demo is a weekly series that demonstrates chips with the Bus Pirate. Come back next Monday for another all new demo.
