Preview: Bus Pirate LCD adapter v2

July 29, 2010 in Bus Pirate, Bus Pirate accessories by Ian | 2 comments

This is a new LCD adapter for the Bus Pirate. The board has been tested, Seeed is building a manufacturing prototype now. The Bus Pirate LCD library in firmware v5.4+ will require this LCD adapter instead of the old v1 adapter.

The v1 LCD adapter was based on a PCF8574 I2C IO expander IC. It took more than a second to update a 4×20 LCD screen, and the production price was too high to justify producing any.

The v2 adapter uses a cheap 74HCT595 8bit shift register instead. It has an SPI interface for blazing fast screen refreshes.

Read more about the v2 LCD adapter features and download the preliminary Eagle files in the forum.

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Bus Pirate v3b extended in stock

July 28, 2010 in Bus Pirate by Ian | 1 comment

The Bus Pirate v3b with an extended temperature range PIC is now in stock at Seeed. The extended temperature PIC doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a quirk of our tiny production runs.

Get a Bus Pirate for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Adafruit also has the Bus Pirate and probe cables in stock and ready to ship.

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Bus Pirate and FlashRom saved my mainboard

July 28, 2010 in Bus Pirate, binmode, utilities by Ian | No comments

MrHijets’ BIOS update [machine translation] went sour, but he revived it with the Bus Pirate and FlashRom:

In my case, Flashrom and the Bus Pirate saved my motherboard…

FlashRom support is an example of how open source and community driven development can extend a project beyond it’s original design. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the Bus Pirate project.

Get a Bus Pirate for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Adafruit also has the Bus Pirate and probe cables in stock and ready to ship.

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USB IR Toy v1.04 fimware bug?

July 27, 2010 in Infrared toy, firmware by Ian | No comments

It looks like there’s a major bug in IR Toy firmware v1.04. After a few days it stops working. We have not seen this bug in the lab, if you have an example please let us know how it happened (died suddenly, on startup, etc) and the operating conditions (mode, etc). v1.04 has been deprecated and removed from the recommended downloads at Google Code.

So far this seems limited to the v1.04 firmware, if you have this problem with a v1.02 firmware please let us know.

People with this bug report that the IR Toy can be revived with the bootloader:

  • Connected the PGC and PGD pins (or via holes) before plugging in the IR Toy. Contact is only needed at power on, so a temporary connection is fine.
  • Plug in the IR Toy USB cable. The LED should turn on.
  • Use the v1.02 firmware package to upload the v1.02 firmware.
  • Replug the USB cable to reset the IR toy after the update.

Illustrated upgrade instructions are in the documentation wiki.

We’ll try to get this straightened out and release a new firmware this week.

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Remote control protocol reverse engineering

July 26, 2010 in Infrared toy by Ian | 2 comments

Ytsirk analyzed the remote control protocol from a LED license plate frame using the USB IR Toy. Also check out part I and part II that introduce the hardware. We can’t wait for the next installment that covers reprogramming the marquee with a battery powered IR Toy, it sounds like there’s a lot of potential mischief fun to be had.

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Free PCB Sunday: Bus Pirate v4 prototype

July 25, 2010 in Development, Free prototype PCB Sunday by Ian | 19 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 professionally-made PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service.

This week we’re giving away an early Bus Pirate v4 prototype. This design has no software or support, it’s been abandoned in favor of a version with a USB PIC. We’re giving away two PCBs this week, just ask for one in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Logic analyzer client roundup

July 23, 2010 in logic analyzer by Ian | 2 comments

There are now several open source logic analyzer clients that speak the SUMP protocol, the most popular open logic analyzer protocol currently in use. They should all be compatible with the Logic Sniffer, the Bus Pirate, and the USB Infrared toy.

Our ideal logic analyzer client would be something that compiled cross-platform, and had the features and usability of the Saleae Logic client without .NET.

What clients have you tried, and which is your favorite? Did we leave any out? What features are most important to you?

Our roundup follows below.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Infrared Toy OSX client application

July 22, 2010 in Infrared toy by Ian | 2 comments

rsdio developed a Mac application for the USB IR Toy. It captures and displays the raw waveform from the IR Toy’s raw infrared mode, and has a limited protocol analyzer.

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DesignSpark freeware PCB design

July 21, 2010 in PCBs, tools by Ian | 12 comments


We’ve been meaning to check out DesignSpark.

Free from practical constraints on board size, pin counts, layers and output types… Multi-page schematic designs are supported…. supports the importing of Eagle design files and libraries…

It’s not open source, but it could potentially be a favorable closed-ware alternative to Eagle. Eagles’s board size limits don’t usually effect us because we use all SMD parts, and the layer limit is pretty moot because 4layer boards are too expensive for us to prototype.

Multiple sheets is a very attractive feature though. Eagle currently limits you to one sheet, which makes big designs unwieldy. Eagle’s big lock-in seems to be the huge number of user generated part libraries.

For an open alternative, there’s Kicad. We haven’t tried it for a few years, anyone know if it’s been updated?

Via Adafruit.

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Extended temperature Bus Pirate

July 20, 2010 in Bus Pirate, manufacturing by Ian | 8 comments

The next batch of Bus Pirate v3b is almost ready. It will ship with bootloader v4.4 and firmware v5.3. It will also be the only known batch of Bus Pirates to use an extended temperature range PIC 24FJ64GA002-E/SS. There weren’t any standard industrial temperature range chips available, so Seeed sourced the extended range version.

These “E” PIC chips have a wider operating temperature range and cost a few cents more. The E chips are rated for -40c to 125c, compared to -40c to 85c with standard industrial chips. In practical terms this doesn’t mean anything because another component might not like higher temperatures, and internal oscillator doesn’t allow for overclocking.

In anticipation of ongoing delays, Seeed has backordered industrial range 24FJ64GA002-I/SS PICs too.

Get a Bus Pirate for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Adafruit also has the Bus Pirate and probe cables in stock and ready to ship.

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USB IR Toy: Sampling mode

July 19, 2010 in Infrared toy by Ian | No comments

See the latest version in the documentation wiki.

The USB IR Toy test firmware v1.04 has a new infrared sampling mode that will be used by the upcoming WinLIRC plugin. This mode times the duration of infrared pulses and sends the measurements to the computer. It’s currently receive-only, but we’ll add a compatible transmit feature in a future update.

Work on the plugin will begin soon, but if you finish it first we’ll send you an IR Toy v1.1 prototype.

Protocol documentation follows.

Read the rest of this entry »

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USB IR Toy test firmware 1.04

July 19, 2010 in Infrared toy, firmware by Ian | No comments

It looks like there’s a bug in v1.04 that makes it stop working after a few days. It can be fixed by connecting the PGC and PGD vias to enter the bootloader and uploading the v1.02 firmware again.

USB IR Toy firmware v1.04 is ready for download. This release has a new mode for better WinLIRC support, and a new firmware query command. The new mode is still being tested, we may need to hand-tune some timing for the best performance.

  • New firmware version query command (v/V)
  • New infrared sampling mode (s/S)

Upgrade instructions and the updated USB IR Toy protocol are in the documentation wiki.

The USB IR Toy is $20, including worldwide shipping.

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Free PCB Sunday: Bus Pirate v4 prototype

July 18, 2010 in Bus Pirate, Free prototype PCB Sunday by Ian | 20 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 professionally-made PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service.

This week we’re giving away an early Bus Pirate v4 prototype. This design has no software or support, it’s been abandoned in favor of a version with a USB PIC. We’re giving away two PCBs this week, just ask for one in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Week in (p)review: July 18, 2010

July 18, 2010 in week in review by Ian | No comments

Here’s some highlights from the past week, in case you missed them:

This week should have some fun stuff too:

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#twatch with LCD back in stock

July 17, 2010 in #twatch by Ian | 2 comments

The #twatch is a Twitter scrolling, networked LCD screen. Not into Twitter? That’s ok, that #twatch has a backdoor server that works with a bunch of user submitted scripts and plugins.

After a long hiatus, the #twatch with an LCD attached is back in stock at Seeed Studio.

There are still a couple #twatch ethernet LCD backpacks PCB only available too, this is a good option if you have your own LCD.

An assembled #twatch with LCD is $45, and the #twatch PCB only (no LCD) is $30, prices include worldwide shipping.

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Bus Pirate: firmware v5.3

July 16, 2010 in Bus Pirate, firmware by Ian | 2 comments

Bus Pirate firmware v5.3 is ready for download. This is a recommended update with bug fixes, enhanced features, and major code cleanup. The documentation wiki has been updated with the new commands and macros.

  • Reviewed and updated terminal text
  • SPI sniffer update (reduced minimum CS delay from 50us to 120ns)
  • Removed sniff while CS high option from SPI sniffer (for now)
  • I2C sniffer update (increased max speed from ~70kHz to >100kHz)
  • Corrected LSB/MSB menu quirks
  • Added least significant bit configuration to all modes
  • Added |X command to convert byte X bitorder
  • Code cleanup: removed allowLSB and allowPULLUP variables
  • Fixed wrong CS terminal text in raw3wire mode

Read about the firmware update process for the ds30 Loader GUI (Windows/Linux) and pirate-loader console app (Windows/Linux/Mac). This firmware requires the v4+ bootloader, be sure you upgrade to the v4 bootloader first if you still have bootloader v2.

Get a Bus Pirate for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Adafruit also has the Bus Pirate and probe cables in stock and ready to ship.

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Advertising: Make update

July 15, 2010 in advertising, kit biz by Ian | 3 comments

Of the three publications we initially targeted for advertising, Make was the only one that doesn’t publish their rates online. We contacted them and got a price sheet.

When we opened the Make ad rate PDF in Acrobat the embedded font wouldn’t display, but despite the totally garbled text (seen above) we could already tell it wasn’t cheap. We had to upload the PDF to Google Docs and view it there.

Make’s cheapest ads are a budget-busting $6000 for a half-page, and $1950 for something called a ‘direct response marketplace 1/4 page’. Advertising in Make is out of the range of our $1000 budget.

Elektor was mentioned in the comments of the previous post. Circuit Cellar emailed about a cross-promotional advertising deal between the two magazines. We’ll share any additional info.

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Infrared remote control jammer

July 15, 2010 in infrared by Ian | No comments

Our friend Alan at Hacked Gadgets released a new IR Jammer kit that can jam infrared remote control devices.

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Gadget Factory stocks buffer wing for Logic Sniffer

July 14, 2010 in logic analyzer by Ian | 4 comments

The Gadget Factory is now stocking a 16bit buffer wing for the Logic Sniffer for $15. This add-on board gives the Logic Sniffer an additional 16 buffered, 5volt tolerant input channels.

You can order the Logic Sniffer at Seeed Studio for $45, including worldwide shipping. Don’t forget that Seeed now has probe cables for $6 each.

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Adafruit DS1307 real time clock breakout board kit

July 14, 2010 in Bus Pirate by Ian | No comments

Adafruit has a new DS1307 real time clock kit. We’ve demonstrated the DS1307 with the Bus Pirate, which you can also pick up at Adafruit.

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