Free PCB Sunday Flash_Destroyer build

IPenguin got a free Flash Destroyer PCB on Free PCB Sunday. He used sockets with the 7-segement displays so different colors can be swapped in later. There’s a build log with lots of photos in the forum.

On May 30, 2010, I saw the Free PCB Sunday: Flash_Destroyer blog pop up and posted a comment…

And now we have a second Flash_Destroyer sending a Microchip 24AA01-I/P EEPROM to the grave!

Get free PCBs every Sunday, just ask for one on the free PCB post. The Flash Destroyer kit is available for $30, including worldwide shipping.

Week in (p)review, June 13, 2010

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

  • On Monday the EEPROM in the Flash Destroyer died with 11,494,069 total write-verify cycles. For a closer look at the  failure, and the live stream viewing statistics, see the Flash Destroyer wrap up.
  • It took three tries to get the USB Infrared Toy right. See the hardware that didn’t make the cut in Confessions of a prototyper: USB Infrared Toy.
  • Bus Pirate firmware v4.5 was released this week. This version includes support for our new PIC programmer app, OpenOCD, and some minor bug fixes. This will be the last v4.x release. The next Bus Pirate firmware will be v5.0 with the newterm interface.

This week should have some new releases and updates too:

  • The Bus Pirate PIC programmer has been used to rescue several Logic Sniffers that shipped without a bootloader. A final release of the programming app and an illustrated guide should be posted early this week. Early adopters can download an experimental test package in the forum.
  • Bus Pirate developers have been using an updated v4 bootloader for several months. It’s tested really well, so we integrated it into an upgrader that works similar to the v2 to v4 bootloader upgrade. The installer and illustrated upgrade guide will probably be ready late this week. You can see the new features and download the experimental upgrade package in the forum.
  • The Logic Sniffer will probably have an official release of the current-best working firmware and bitstream. Links to significant test updates can be found here.

Free PCB Sunday: Bus Pirate v3b

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 the last two Bus Pirate v3b PCBs that we have in the shop. v3b is a minor update to the Bus Pirate with a few tweaks that make it easier to manufacture, read all about it here.

You can 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.

Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Bus Pirate v3b”

“Logic Analyzer in a Day” Experts’ Challenge

Development board manufacturer Opal Kelly has invited three FPGA experts to design logic analyzers. Each participant has 8 to 10 hours to complete a design, the final designs will be posted online. The analyzer will be built with Opal Kelly’s modules and software development kit, but there might be some interesting takes on a common FPGA project.

Thanks to Jack for the tip, via Embedded.com.

Ril3y’s new Open Logic Sniffer case

Ril3y sent photos of a new laser-cut case for the Open Logic Sniffer. This case isn’t available yet, but we’ll keep you updated. Ril3y also sells a popular laser-cut case for the Bus Pirate.

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

Flash Destroyer wrap up

11,494,069 is the final write-verify cycle count for the Flash Destroyer. Since the flash destruction ended on Tuesday, we’ve been playing with the EEPROM to understand how the failure behaves.

We found a ticking data time bomb.  Broken bits can linger at a recently written value for seconds before corrupting. Certain writes initially appear successful, which could easily confuse a write verification algorithm.

Follow us below for the Flash Destroyer wrap up. We’ll also look at the live stream viewer statistics: 5.5viewer/years were spent watching flash destruction in the first week alone.

You can preorder the Flash Destroyer ‘I like to solder’ kit for $30, including worldwide shipping.

Continue reading “Flash Destroyer wrap up”

Confessions of a prototyper: USB Infrared Toy

Confessions is a series where we share prototypes that didn’t quite work out. Read previous posts for the Bus Pirate, #twatch, and web platform here.

The USB Infrared Toy took a few tries to get right. We’d like to fill you in on some things that happened behind the scenes before we released the v1 hardware. It went through three revisions before we were happy, and even then there were plenty of bugs in the initial production version.

The USB IR Toy is $20, including worldwide shipping. At the time of this post it’s on back order, but v1a hardware is currently in production.

Continue reading for a look at the early USB IR Toy prototypes.

Continue reading “Confessions of a prototyper: USB Infrared Toy”

Bus Pirate firmware v4.5

Firmware v4.5 for the Bus Pirate can be downloaded here. Changes include:

  • New binary rawwire command for PIC programmer (Logic Sniffer rescue)
  • OpenOCD support (may have been missing from v4.2)
  • Fix to terminal input parser accepting out-of-range characters bug
  • Other minor fixes

This will be the last v4 release. The next release will be v5.0 with Sjaak’s newterm overhaul.

We prepared this interim release because v5 isn’t quite done, but the Bus Pirate PIC programmer needs the rawwire extension to reprogram Logic Sniffers that shipped without a bootloader. The Bus Pirate PIC programmer application is working in limited testing, and should be ready for release in a day or two.

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.

Package includes firmware for Bus Pirate v3 and v1a. Use the v3 firmware for v2go Bus Pirates. v0a and v2a are no longer supported, but there’s an end-of-life v3 release somewhere here.

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.

Flash Destroyer: Dead at 11.49 million

Some time between 8:00 and 9:00 UTC the Flash Destroyer reached 11.49 million write cycles and detected a verify error. The final count is 11,494,06X, the last digit is X because we won’t know what it is until we read it from the PIC over USB. The destruction started at 8:11 UTC on May 25, and it took almost exactly 13days to reach the first error.

The verify error will be live on ustream for the next day, then we’ll do some analysis to determine where the error occurred, how many cells it effects, and if it persists after a reset.

You guessed the final count when the EEPROM died. DavE got the closest (11,500,000), followed by Tagno25 (11,527,253), and Jason (11,700,000). Dave, Tagno25, and Jason will each get a couple free PCBs. If we made a mistake and missed your guess, please let us know. Thanks for participating, we had a blast with this project.

You can preorder the Flash Destroyer ‘I like to solder’ kit for $30, including worldwide shipping.

Free PCB Sunday: Flash Destroyer


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. PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service.

This week we’re giving away two Flash Destroyer PCBs. The Flash Destroyer is our new project that writes and verifies an EEPROM until it burns out. The Flash Destroyer is currently streaming live here, and has reached nearly 11million write-verify cycles. When do you think it will die?

You can get a Flash Destroyer kit for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Flash Destroyer”

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 rate generator register (SPBGR, or similar). Here’s a couple tools we use to calculate the closest BRG value for a given baud rate and PIC crystal speed:

Of course, you can also calculate it by hand, using the formulas in the datasheet.

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 the right.

The counter is stored as a 32bit (4 byte) unsigned long variable. The maximum counter value is 4,294,967,295 before rolling over to 0 again, but this can be extended further if needed.

We pushed the button to save the current write count before updating the firmware. The image above shows a dump of the PIC’s internal EEPROM what contains the saved value.

  • The first four bytes are the saved count: 0x006E7ED9. If you put your system calculator in scientific/HEX mode, enter 006E7ED9, and then switch to DEC, you can get the more familiar decimal value 7,241,433.
  • 0xC9 is the simple parity check byte that ensures the previous four bytes weren’t just empty values on a blank chip.

There’s still 200+ bytes of free EEPROM in the PIC that can be used to store other configuration info, like EEPROM type or address, or write speed.

The latest updates are in the SVN. We’ll release an updated project archive shortly. You can preorder the Flash Destroyer ‘I like to solder’ kit for $30, including worldwide shipping.

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 final count guess to win free PCBs.

You can preorder the Flash Destroyer ‘I like to solder’ kit for $30, including worldwide shipping.

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 extendable
  • It should be reasonably easy to write a web server task now, but without the ability to read files, you can’t serve much

We’ll be using the open source uIP stack port in all our future networked projects, it solves the licensing issues with Microchip’s non-distributable code. The uIP port doesn’t have as many features as the Microchip stack, yet, but it’s already a viable alternative for us. Most of our projects, like the #twatch and @tweet_tree, just use a simple TCPIP client.

The latest uIP port source is in the SVN. Previous updates here.

Seeed is making a small second batch of web platforms. You can probably backorder one at Seeed, they should be available in a few weeks.

          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 surface mount parts or a USB firmware.

          via Hack A Day.

          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 box with choices configurable.
          – Improved contrast on some buttons.
          – Serial port time outs are now configurable.
          – trace color and background are now configurable.

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

          Free PCB Sunday: Flash Destroyer

          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. PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service.

          This week we’re giving away two Flash Destroyer PCBs. The Flash Destroyer is our new project that writes and verifies an EEPROM until it burns out.

          You can get a Flash Destroyer kit for $30, including worldwide shipping at Seeed Studio. Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Flash Destroyer”

          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 had to be different from what we’ve seen before.

          Congratulations to Florin and the BlueRover team.