Category Archives: utilities

Workshop Organizer – inventory controller for home-workshops

Dilshan Jayakody writes: Workshop Organizer is light-weight, cross platform inventory controller for home-workshops. This application is specifically design to manage electronic/electrical components at home-workshops, but it can use to manage other areas of workshop including tools, machinery and mechanical components, etc. To store data, this application use SQLite database system and all the necessary runtime […]

Conversion programmer in TL866cs TL866A

radioman wrote a small utility which generates the full TL866A firmware, based on custom serial: For the uninitiated, the programmer TL866 (MiniPro) is one of the programmers Bestsellers in recent times among the best de-bricker/makers.  It’s a small device that allows programming of a large number of memories (ROM / FLASH / NVRAM) and microcontrollers (MCU […]

Analog Discovery 2 channel scope, waveform generator, logic analyzer

Digilent’s Analog design kit is a 100 MSPS 2 channel scope, a 2 channel 100MSPS waveform generator, and a 16 channel logic analyzer built into one. The pricing ranges from $99 for US-students required to buy one for a class, to $249 for non-academics. Updated specs, thanks Torwag! Two 50 MSPS, 5 MHz differential oscilloscopes […]

Adafruit launches Circuit Playground app

Adafruit has launched their Circuit Playground app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It provides a collection of reference formulas at the touch of a button, simplifiying calculations to make your project more fun. Decipher resistor & capacitor codes with ease. Calculate power, resistance, current, and voltage with the Ohm’s Law & Power Calc modules. […]

Serial port monitor software

The crew at Adafruit remind us of a handy serial port monitoring tool for Windows known as PortMon. PortMon is an old school Microsoft utility used for monitoring all serial and parallel activity on a system. While USB rules the day for most PC-peripheral communications, PortMon can help when reverse engineering serial devices by sniffing […]

pyBusPirateLite support for Windows

There is a new version of pyBusPirateLite, the Python library for interacting with the Bus Pirate.  It now supports Windows versions of Python. You can download the latest version from the Bus Pirate SVN Repository, or a package containing just pyBusPirateLite.  See the wiki page on Bus Pirate Scripting in Python to get started.

Virtual USB analyzer

The Virtual USB Analyzer is a well documented free and open source tool for visualizing logs of USB packets, from hardware or software USB sniffer tools. It provides a graphical visualization along with raw hex dumps and high-level protocol analysis. The Analyzer is NOT a hardware USB analyzer or USB sniffer: it is an interface […]

Breaking SSL on embedded devices

Developers use embedded devices all the time, often without implementing security measures. When they do, they often rely on SSL. As revealed by the LittleBlackBox project there exists a collection of thousands of private SSL keys extracted from various embedded devices. These private keys are stored in a database where they are correlated with their […]

Bus Pirate and FlashRom saved my mainboard

MrHijet writes with a followup to our previous post, The Bus Pirate and Flashrom saved my mainboard: I already wrote something about the rescue of my computer in my blog, however it was written in german. I flashed my brand new core i7 mainboard as my processor wasn’t recognized correctly. After that, the mainboard was […]

Bus Pirate power tools

Are there any ‘power tools’ that would make the Bus Pirate more useful? We want to develop a collection of cross-platform command line utilities for common stuff. There’s already two apps. The first accesses the SPI sniffer from binary mode for maximum speed. The second is a self-test utility that will be used in production. […]

Test script processor for the Bus Pirate

Here’s another use for the AT Command Script Processor we posted last week. We’ve been using to run test scripts on new Bus Pirate firmwares. Get a Bus Pirate v3b for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Adafruit also has the Bus Pirate and probe cables in stock and ready to ship. Each Bus […]

Bus Pirate SPI sniffer utility v0.1

SPI sniffing with the Bus Pirate just got easier. SPIsniffer is a helper application (power tool?) that accesses the SPI sniffer using the fast binary mode. This is 3 to 4 times faster than displaying snooped output in the terminal mode. In terminal mode the Bus Pirate decodes raw data to user-friendly HEX formatted numbers, […]

USB Infrared Toy: WinLIRC, irGraph

There’s a new IR Toy/WinLIRC tutorial that shows how to decode remote controls on your computer. WinLIRC doesn’t control things alone, but it works as a plugin with automation programs like EventGhost to control your computer using a remote control with almost any protocol. For instant satisfaction, try the WinLIRC irGraph tool. It shows a […]

AT command script processor for GSM modem debugging

Last week we wrote some software for a GSM (cellular) modem module.  The GSM modem is controlled by AT commands, like an old landline modem. Debugging is usually done by typing AT commands into Hyperterminal or the Bus Pirate. We got tired of tapping out tons of AT commands by hand, so we created an […]

Bus Pirate and FlashRom saved my mainboard

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 […]