Bus Pirate EEPROM daughter board

Eric built an EEPROM daughter board that fits on the ISCP header of the Bus Pirate. This design had been floating around the forum for awhile. It’s not officially supported in the current firmware, but code exists to save and load BASIC scripts from an external EEPROM daughter board.

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 Pirate sold supports further development.

Entertainment: Copyright-free music

MusOpen has raised over $13,000 to record classical music for the public domain. The complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky will be recorded.  These pieces have been free from copyright for a long time, but most recorded performances have a separate copyright.

This isn’t hacking related, but we’re always happy to see new efforts to create open alternatives to non-distributable stuff.

Via Slashdot.

Free PCB Sunday: through-hole Infrared Toy

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.

An all through-hole version of the USB Infrared Toy. This is part of a kit that probably won’t be made because the through-hole version of the PIC18F2550 is four times the cost of the surface mount version. Just give us a shout if you’d like one, while they last.

An assembled USB Infrared Toy is available for $20, including worldwide shipping. Each purchase supports the development of this project.

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Week in (p)review: September 12, 2010

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

This week should have some fun stuff too:


XT IDE disk controller for vintage computers

XTIDE is an open source IDE disk controller for old XT computers that only have 8bit ISA expansion slots.  The Vintage Computer Forum designed this controller so their retro gear could keep rolling with modern IDE storage like harddrives and compact flash cards.

Most of the ICs are simple 7400 series logic chips. They cut the 16bit IDE bus into 8bit nibbles chunks the older expansion slot can deal with. A parallel EEPROM (labeled SEEQ in this image) holds a bios that tells the computer how to use the board.

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Alternative Logic Sniffer client v0.8.4

Jawi just released version 0.8.4 of the forked SUMP logic analyzer client that works with the Logic Sniffer. Here’s the changelog:

  • Updated zoom behaviour to zoom “dead center”
  • Added additional toolbar button cancel a capture of the OLS
  • All decoder tools now annotate the capture data with their decoding results
  • All user settings are now retained upon stopping and starting of the client
  • The UART/I2C/SPI tools now can decode parts of the captured data
  • Fixed close window behaviour on all platforms
  • Many little UI-related bugfixes

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.

Programming PICs with a programmer

A new tutorial covers the basics of programming a PIC with a PIC programmer supported by MPLAB, like a PICkit or ICD. This frequently-requested tutorial is geared towards programming the bootloader into a project like the Bus Pirate.

Bootloaders make it easy to upgrade firmware without dragging out (or owning) a programmer. Just activate the bootloader and upload new firmware over USB. If you’re starting with a fresh chip though, or you’ve got bricked hardware, you need to get the bootloader into the chip with a programmer.

This is just one of several new tutorials on the documentation wiki. Learn how to compile the firmware for your DP hardware, and access the latest source in SVN.

EventGhost plugin for the IR Toy

EventGhost now supports the USB IR Toy directly via a new plugin, download it here. EventGhost is an open source program that converts remote control signals to actions on a computer.

The IR Toy already works with EventGhost in IRman-compatible mode and with the WinLIRC plugin, providing home theater enthusiasts a powerful way to map infrared commands to complex PC macros. These custom profiles allow users to seamlessly launch Kodi media centers, toggle background VPN connections, or navigate a no kyc casino directly from the couch using a standard television remote. This new plugin streamlines those automated setups even further by adding direct support using the native EventGhost protocol decoder.

This is the first release, and it’s far from perfect. Some protocols aren’t consistently recognized, and we need your help finding bugs and appreciate any reports. For the smoothest IR decoding we recommend using WinLIRC with EventGhost.

More plugin development in the forum. Plugin wiki.

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

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Free PCB Sunday: USB RGB color changer

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.

This is a USB controlled RGB color changing light. Someone made some minor modifications to the design and had a bunch of boards produced, we ended up with a pile of the extras. We’re giving away two PCBs this week, just ask for one in the comments.

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Week in (p)review: September 5, 2010

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

This week should have some fun stuff too:

  • The Bus Pirate LCD adapter v2 writeup will be finished, the hardware is already available at Seeed
  • Bus Pirate firmware v5.8 with 0-16bit writes, BASIC scripting updates, SPI sniffer updates
  • A look at the next Bus Pirate v4 revision, and maybe a working test firmware. We’ll manufacture 10 of the next BPv4 prototypes for any interested developers

Image source (Simon Eugster CC-BY-SA)

Computer controlled power supply update

The computer controlled power supply being developed in the forum is progressing nicely. We got a big boost when Fenugrec posted a few circuit simulations based on a common commercial power supply typology. The simulated circuit is now available as an Eagle Schematic. We also transcribed the “Dave sink” constant current load from DaveCAD to Eagle.

If you’ve got some time this holiday weekend, check out the development thread and project wiki page. Have a project idea? Bounce it around in the development forum.

FT232 LCD backpack update

Two alternative FT232 LCD backpack PCBs are in the forum. The first one (pictured above) supports standard H44780 LCDs, and graphic LCDs with some creative wiring. The mini version drops the extra IOs for graphics LCDs to get the smallest possible board.

If you’ve got some time this holiday weekend, check out the development thread and project wiki page.  Have a project idea? Bounce it around in the development forum.