Author Archives: Ian

Bus Pirate JTAG

The Bus Pirate can be used as an ARM JTAG debugger with OpenOCD. Joby Taffey set up the OpenOCD/Bus Pirate tool chain, and used it to work with a Stellaris LM3S9B90 (ARM Cortex-M3). Get a Bus Pirate for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Adafruit also has the Bus Pirate and probe cables in […]

Several PIC UART calculator utilities

Simple serial communication, legacy or with a USB->serial converter, remains a common interface for microcontrollers. The Bus Pirate uses it, the Arduino uses it, lots of hobby projects rely on a serial data link. Most Microchip PIC microcontrollers have a UART, hardware that simplifies serial communications. The serial speed is set by programming the baud […]

Flash Destroyer firmware update

The Flash Destroyer was offline briefly for a firmware update (live stream here). In anticipation of rolling over to 10 million write-verify cycles, we’ve added a decimal point that shows the millions place. When it hits 10 million the least significant digit (the 1s) will be dropped, and the decimal point will move one to […]

Flash Destroyer passes 6 million writes

James managed to catch a screenshot of the Flash Destroyer as it hit 6,000,000, thanks James! The EEPROM is specified for 1 million writes at the voltage and temperature extremes listed in the datasheet. Running at room temperature, this chip might surpass 10 million write cycles. Or not. Stay tuned and find out. Submit your […]

Web platform: uIP TCP/IP stack with multitasking

There’s some new features in  Bonybrown’s  uIP TCP/IP stack project for the web platform. Some notable changes are: The code runs 3 “tasks” that it multitasks between. One for the IP stack, one for the serial port (debugging help) and another for a handler for telnet (port 23). The telnet server task is pretty easily […]

USB to serial adapter in DB9 footprint

There aren’t many simple ways to add a USB interface to a project using only through-hole parts. This USB-serial adapter from FTDI has the same shape and pinout as a through-hole serial connector. It’s a little pricey (~$22), a USB->serial cable is usually cheaper, but it’s a nice option for a professional-looking USB device without […]

Windows Logic Sniffer client update

There’s a new version of raphihouri’s Windows/.Net client for the Logic Sniffer.  This update incorporates suggestions from the forum. Fixed: – glitches at the beginning of trace. – invalid trace returns in demo mode. – window resizing stretches the trace. – channel and trigger numbering and mapping. Added/changed: – Buffer size is now a combo […]

1st Place at Digilent Design Contest

YourITronics’ BlueRover project won first place at the 6th annual Digilent Design Contest. The idea of a remote controlled rover excites almost every electronics student and when we heard about the Digilent contest we realized that we have the possibility to make such a project real. We decided to build our own remote controlled rover but it […]

Flash Destroyer passes 2 million writes

Some time in the last few hours the Flash Destroyer passed 2 million write-verify cycles. jnd points to Microchip application notes 01019A [PDF!] and 00537 [PDF!] that explain the EEPROM endurance characterization process. The higher the temperature, the worse the endurance will be. Generally, and approximately, a device which fails at 10 million cycles at […]

Flash Destroyer approaching 1 million writes

The Flash Destroyer, our new EEPROM tester, is going to reach the first million write cycles in the next few hours (see a live stream here). Can you guess what the final write count will be when the EEPROM dies? We’ll give a couple unpublished Dangerous Prototypes PCBs to the three closest guesses. You can […]

Logic Sniffer: Major update, testers needed

This is an old version, see the latest version on the documentation wiki. This week there should be a major update for the Open Logic Sniffer that fixes a communication problem on some boards when alternate bitstreams are loaded. This fix implements the SPI connection between the PIC and FPGA.  The update improved sample download […]

Prototype: Flash_Destroyer

The most recent documentation is now on the wiki EEPROMs, such as flash memory, store data in electronic devices like cell phones, smart cards, SD cards, and solid-state drives. This type of memory can only endure a limited number of writes, it will eventually wear out and it won’t store new data. The Flash Destroyer […]

Bus Pirate PIC 18F24J50 programmer update

We’ve been working on a PIC 24F programmer for the Bus Pirate, now we’re working on PIC18F24J50 support. PIC 24Fs and the 18F ‘J’ parts can be programmed directly by the Bus Pirate because they are 3.3volt chips that don’t require a separate programming voltage. 18FJ support means the Bus Pirate can reprogram any Logic […]

Sigrok: Open source logic analyzer client

We previously posted the Sigrok open source logic analyzer client.  They’ve done a lot of work and it now supports the Saleae Logic, EE Electronics XLA/ESLA100, and ASIX SIGMA. Open Logic Sniffer support is in progress, which will enable Bus Pirate support at the same time. The Logic Sniffer is $45, including worldwide shipping. The […]