Steve sent in an illustrated guide to connecting a Bus Pirate to Mac OSX. This guide is consistent with the most recent v5.x firmwares and Bus Pirate v3.

Honken dropped an open source USB firmware for PIC microcontrollers in the forum. This is a preliminary echo test that proves the concept, a layered stack will follow.

We ported the firmware to the IR Toy, you can load it up and test it yourself using the bootloader. That refreshing feeling is USB flowing from freely distributable source code.

This major milestone means open source PIC projects can soon do USB with completely open source code. Projects will be easier to compile because they won’t require a separate driver download from Microchip. This will be integrated into the USB IR Toy, Logic Sniffer, and Bus Pirate v4 prototype as soon as possible.

Thank you Honken for making this valuable contribution to open source!

Now about that VID/PID issue…

Image source (Simon Eugster CC-BY-SA)

SparkFun has a limited number of Logic Sniffers available. If you’ve been waiting for a North American distributor, now is your chance to pick one up at SparkFun. This is the same hardware designed by the Gadget Factory and Dangerous Prototypes, and manufactured by Seeed Studio.

A special thanks to SparkFun for helping us raise awareness of this open source project!

Dukey’s latest update to the USB Infrared Toy plugin for WinLIRC now supports the new transmit features in firmware v07. Read our step-by-step WinLIRC configuration guide if you need help getting started.

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

tblough posted pictures of his Bus Pirate case made from a scrap of black Delrin.

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.

USB Infrared Toy firmware v07 is ready to download. V06 was a little buggy, this release should be a lot more solid. This download contains the latest firmware only.

• Transmit fixed (hopefully)
• LED on/off/mute commands
• Sample timer setup
• Transmit frequency modulation setup
• Byte endianness adjustment
• Fixed hardware version detect (now solid)
• Cleaned most code (could be new errors)

Upgrade instructions are on the wiki. The new IR sample mode commands are also documented on the wiki.

The next version will have some minor feature updates.

You can get the updated IR Toy hardware early by writing a plugin for EventGhost. Python hackers wanted!

The USB IR Toy is $20, including worldwide shipping. Every sale supports this open source project.

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.

Some stuff:

• Yes, we’ll mail it anywhere in the world!
• Be sure to use a real e-mail in the address field so we can contact you for shipping info.
• First come, first serve. If we can’t contact the first commenters we move down the list, so you could consider making a request even if it looks like all the PCBs are gone.
• Limit one PCB per address per month please.
• Like everything else on this site, PCBs are offered without warranty.

We try to stagger free PCB Sunday posts so every time zone has a chance to participate, but the best way to see the post first is to subscribe to the RSS feed.

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

• v06 USB Infrared Toy firmware with transmit mode
• The USB LCD backpack is nearly ready for a prototype
• The computer controlled voltage/current source/sink picked up a few new contributors
• Bus Pirate v4 worked over USB for the first time
• There’s a new collection of power tools for the Bus Pirate
• We got a big box of parts from Mouser

This week should have some fun stuff too:

• USB Infrared Toy firmware v07 with bug fixes
• Bus Pirate firmware v5.8 with 0-16bit writes, BASIC scripting updates, SPI sniffer updates
• The Bus Pirate LCD adapter v2 will probably be available

This weird display needs a constant control signal. Eric used the Bus Pirate BASIC script engine to light it up, his script is in the forum.

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.

Over the last few weeks we moved most project-related stuff to the new documentation wiki. This week it became official: we pointed all the project links at the top of the blog to the new wiki pages.

Here’s some highlights:

• Projects currently in development
• Project list
• Updated Bus Pirate manual
• Get involved: help wanted