Ril3y demonstrates an I2C magnetic compass sensor (Sure Electronics DC-SS503) with the Bus Pirate.
Don’t forget that Ril3y has stylish laser-cut acrylic cases for the Bus Pirate (seen here).
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.
Moogle was disappointed by his new Arduino Uno. He thought it was pretty unrefined: rough edges, thin solder mask, poorly aligned headers. Arduino responded directly that this is an isolated incident. They will replace any less than perfect hardware. (A Moogle followup post)
Additionally, bongobat may have encountered a major bug in the circuit that switches between USB and external power in all Arduino versions. Pololu Robotics did some investigation and the result isn’t great:
Sparkfun has finished looking into the problem, and it sounds like they are not going to do anything about it. We have put a warning on our page for the Arduino, but there is not much more we can do, either.
After looking into the design, it seems to us that the circuit is just fundamentally flawed, and there is little reason to expect it to work well regardless of which MOSFET is used. The newer MOSFET makes the problem more evident, so it is easily verifiable in all kinds of tests. (These were not just contrived tests: on the one laptop we tried, we measured almost 200mA flowing into the USB port after powering it off. We verified that this occurred across the entire recommended operating range of 7-12V on VIN.) The new Arduino Uno looks like it will have the same basic problem, but we have not tried one yet.
While we do not know of any cases of damage to computers, 200mA is not a trivial amount of current, so we do not recommend leaving an externally-powered Arduino connected to your computer, especially while the computer is off.
Another frequent criticism is that routing on the new board is sloppy. What do you think of the new Arduino board? Have you received the hardware?
The first round of a new design is almost always dogged by some issues. The Uno was available just about everywhere the moment it dropped, it must have been a massive undertaking to set that up. Arduino is a popular piece of hardware with a very active community, someone’s going to find a few issues. And that’s a good thing. Open source projects encourage dialog between developers and users, the community can help identify problems and provide solutions. The developers can roll fixes into the next revision.
Each Bus Pirate upgrade package includes firmware for Bus Pirate v3/v2go and the older v1a hardware. If nobody uses the v1a firmware, it doesn’t make sense for us to keep releasing it.
This is the second call for any v1a users to make themselves known. If nobody needs the firmware we’ll stop building it.
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. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service.
This week we’re giving away two PCBs for the new web platform v1.1. The original web platform was updated with mounting holes, extra IO, and optional USB power supply. Just ask for a free PCB in the comments.
Get an assembled web platform for $40, including worldwide shipping. Web platform v1.1 is in stock and shipping now.
Here’s some highlights from the past two weeks, in case you missed them:
This week should have some fun stuff too:
Get your spy on with this DIY laser listening device. It can be made from a few parts on a breadboard.
Via the forum.
Jawi just released version 0.8.5 of the forked SUMP logic analyzer client that works with the Logic Sniffer.
Download it here. Here’s the major updates, see the changelog for more:
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.
Roterdan posted pictures of a hacked case from Seeed Studio for the Logic Sniffer.
Here’s some other user-submitted cases.
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. Every order supports Logic Sniffer development.
USB Infrared Toy firmware v08 is ready to download. This download includes the latest firmware for the IR Toy, and an experimental compile for the Hack a Day infrared receiver.
Upgrade instructions for the Infrared Toy. Protocol and command documentation has been updated with any recent changes.
The USB IR Toy is $20, including worldwide shipping. Every sale supports this open source project.
Here’s some pictures of our friend Ril3y’s workshop.
Ril3y has awesome laser-cut acrylic cases for the Bus Pirate in his Synthetos webshop.
Via Make.
The web platform is a tiny server designed for networked hacks where a full PC is inconvenient. This tiny internet appliance can connect to web services, control physical objects from a browser interface, or email sensor status reports. It’s our go-to board for interactive internet art like the @tweet tree Twitter-controlled Christmas tree.
Web platform version 1.1 is a minor update of the original hardware . This version has several frequently requested features:
The new hardware is 100% compatible with all the firmware and demos for v1:
Read the hardware documentation, or check out the brief version after the break.
Get web platform v1.1 for $40, including worldwide shipping. Updated hardware is in stock and shipping now. Thanks for your support!
Crystal oscillators generate pretty accurate frequencies, but the output varies a bit depending on the operating temperature. The crystal oven heats a crystal to a constant temperature to get the most accurate and consistent frequency possible.
Via Hack a Day.
asdf just received the first LCD adapter v2. More pictures on asdf’s Flickr photostream.
There are sporadic reports of missing connector cables. Seeed is aware of the issue, just ask for a replacement if your cable is missing.
Get an LCD adapter for $9.
Via the forum.
Romuald writes about our earlier RFID post:
I just read the latest post about RFID development. I just let you know that it already exists Free/Libre projects in this area.
- Proxmark which is a famous tool to sniff, learn, tweak, spoof many kind of RFID.
- WIP mikeycard which will be a tool useful to clone a MIFARE Classic tag and emulate passive RFID/NFC tags.
Update, from the comments:
I forgot to talk about OpenPCD that use librfid which is Free/Libre hardware and software too.
And maybe someone could be interested in libnfc which is a Free/Libre library to drive NFC chips (currently on the proprietary PN53x chips).
Thanks for the tip!
Bus Pirate firmware v5.8 is ready to download.
It’s been a while since the last release, this time we have new features and bug fixes. The Bus Pirate documentation has been updated to reflect these changes.
What’s on your wishlist for firmware v5.9?
The archive includes firmware for v2go/v3 and v1a. v1a was sold as a kit by Fundimental Logic. We still support it in every release, but should we? Please let us know if you still use v1a, or this might be the last update for that hardware.
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.
Some interesting RFID development tools for reading, writing, and spoofing RFID cards. Unfortunately it sounds like there’s no source, which is the most challenging part of a project like this.
Via Hack a Day.
A new Arduino UNO development board is available. The name has changed, but it still fits standard Arduino shields. The FT232R USB chip (also used in the Bus Pirate) has been replaced by an extra AVR that provides USB->serial emulation with the open source LUFA USB stack.
This news has been pretty unavoidable. UNO boards are available just about everywhere now.
Via Adafruit.
Starlino demos the Freescale MMA7456L accelerometer with an I2C/SPI interface with the Bus Pirate.
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.
Markus accessed a USB memory stick from a 32bit PIC using FatFs with the Microchip USB host stack. Source code is available at the link.
