Bus Pirate Preorder 2 Update

bp-unbox-0

A few weeks ago we held a preorder for the Bus Pirate universal serial interface tool. We split the preorder into two parts due to a shortage of PIC 24FJ64GA002-I/SO chips. The first preorder is arriving worldwide now, the second preorder has a longer lead time. Here’s everything we currently know about preorder 2, it’s subject to change, but we wanted to keep you up to date.

Preorder 2 contains orders for 563 Bus Pirates. Seeed Studio noticed an error in our quality control testing routine that misclassified about 50 preorder 1 Bus Pirates as defective. We updated the test and passing units will ship immediately to preorder 2 participants on a first come, first serve basis. Another 500 PICs are scheduled to arrive after August 1, which should take care of most remaining orders.

A special thanks to the fantastic engineers at Microchip who took the time to peruse the Bus Pirate code, and immediately gave the correct solution to our quality control problem. Great job Microchip, thank you!

We released an updated version of the Bus Pirate firmware package. The firmware is exactly the same, we just changed a speed setting in the P24qp.exe quick programmer utility for MS Windows. During development we increased the baud rate of the quick programmer to make development faster, and we forgot to change it back to a safe speed for normal use.

60 thoughts on “Bus Pirate Preorder 2 Update

  1. i already have 4 projects rotting on my bench for my preorder 2 buspirate i was one of the first pople to jump on preorder 2 becasue my dumb ass missed preorder one >.>

  2. @itil

    My bus pirate just got off the boat (plane). I might not see it till next week.

    Here are the tracking logs.

    +Foreign Acceptance, July 18, 2009, 5:48 pm, HONG KONG

    +Foreign International Dispatch, July 20, 2009, 3:00 pm, HONG KONG AIR MAIL CENTRE, HONG KONG

    +Processed through Sort Facility, July 22, 2009, 9:57 pm, JAMAICA, NY 11405

  3. o.k. let me conclude, that means there will be another 550 happy geeks for preorder 2

    13 very unhappy geeks who filled out preorder 2 but will not get one (math and your given numbers just saying that)

    and a bunch of overall unhappy geeks like me who missed both pre-orders…..

    Hmmm… what can we do to server the 13 preorder2 people and all the others who pop up in the comments already ?

    Most easy would be a preorder3 or even better found a company who like to stock them….

  4. @unhappy geek – The final 13 will most likely be filled with local stock.

    It’s not possible to do another pre-order until more PICs are available. There just isn’t anywhere in the world to source PIC25FJ64GA002-I/SO. If you come across any we’re totally open to suggestions.

  5. I took the bus to work today. The Bus Pirate jumped out of my backpack and put a cutlass to the driver’s throat. The cops showed up. Six hours later…. Well, let’s just say it was an ugly ending. Bus Pirate – BAD.

  6. In that photo-
    IC2…I count 28 pins?
    Is that a solder bridge at pins 25-26? (right by the screen for ‘C4’)

    Mine *should* arrive in Los Angeles in the morning if my mailman doesn’t wuss out.

  7. Just missed the second preorder due to an extended vacation :-(

    Maby a good time for a Bus pirate V3 with another PIC that is more available?

    [Boomer] Also saw that, Difficult to see but it looks like an almost solder bridge under this angle

  8. @ian – Mine arrived in the UK post this morning and I upgraded to v0h straight away. Mostly for the bus sniffing feature but also because its a good way of getting to grips with the device. I noticed that the (0) menu (macro list) does not contain the bus sniffer option, though it is of course available to select. Just a small thing but thought Id say it given everything else was so good!

    @chris – another chris eh! Hehe I think UK stock is probably a bit out of the way – and much higher cost, though I guess it is an option if people are desperate.

  9. RS do say how many they have – you have to type in the quantity you want and click ‘check live availability’. If you just type in say 1000 then it returns with as many as they have up to that amount. They only have 19 of those PICs in stock at the moment – probably not going to help towards the 500 needed!
    Farnell and RS are also significantly more expensive than microchipdirect.com, even in the large quantities so it’s not great to order any quantity from them.

    You also have to watch for the idiots in packing at RS – we ordered 50 20-pin QFN IC’s because we couldn’t get them anywhere else within the timeframe we had. They all came individually packaged and sealed in their own anti-static bag with sticker on! What bright spark decided to take them all out of the reel in which they originally came and put them into a bag?? Bear in mind that these IC’s are less than 5mm*5mm and were put in a bag about the size of your hand. A length of the tape with all 50 in would have sufficed quite nicely!

  10. Mouser has 270 in stock according to their website, priced at $2.86 each in quantities of 100.

    What do you have planned for those of us in pre-order #2 who don’t get the ~550(assuming no defects) you have available?

  11. I’m scratching my head over why this thing has appeared so many times on this site and all the hype surrounding it, I guess I’m missing something, namely – what purpose does this thing serve? what can you do with it?

  12. @haku it provides a direct serial interface to ICs via a aerial terminal and a usb cable to your comp. it allows you to quickly prototype and get a feel for a new IC without having to build a supporting circuit or programming anything.

  13. @chris – The beta I2C sniffer is in the 2.0 release, but it’s not an official feature. I’m waiting to see the spread of microcontroller revision numbers before I finish that feature. If all (or most) Bus Pirates are REV4, then I’ll use the hardware module for decoding which should work great at high speeds. If not, then I need to finish the software decoder which is nearly complete (there’s still a bug detecting the stop condition).

    I’ll write a detailed guide to firmware v2.0 soon.

  14. @ian – That sounds good, I only mentioned it incase you had forgotten but obviously youre well on top of it!
    As a side question, surely the revision number of the chip doesnt change anything significant about the coding… Obviously none of the pinouts/… change but I dont understand what would other than some internal silicon which should surely be invisible to the user…

  15. I2C hardware on REV3 is fussy, so I used a software routine for I2C. REV4 is better (according to the errata), so we can detect the revision number and offer the hardware I2C library and hardware I2C bus sniffer if it will work. The hardware module way of doing it is less effort, code can be written in a few minutes.

  16. Same here,
    my postie rudely awoke me early saturday morn with a dinky package containing my buspirate! I thought I’d knock up a video of my experiences with it, the video is in the form of a quick start guide too.
    Please check it out, just go to YouTube and search for BusPirate – I seem to have the only BP related vid on the entire site, so far I hope!
    I’m hoping it’ll help some n00bs out, and whet the appetite of those still waiting on their buspirates! ;-)

  17. @chris – you would think that they wouldn’t change much, but you gota watch microchip….. :) though my mistake was going from 64k to 256k….. very annoyingly, the internal regulator has to be “desabled” on one vs. “enabling it” on the other….. spent a day trying to figure out what my problem was, thought it was pcb layers grounding out at vias. Nope…. just had to pay attention ….

  18. Ok, so what’s the status? When can we expect preorder 3 to begin and who do I have to off to get one of these things? You would think with this much demand someone better get with the program cause this is losing money by the second.

  19. ^ Got it !
    It was packed in the static bag, in (lots of) bubble wrap, inside a small carboard box.
    Nicely done.

    But 2 pins on the FTDI are soldered together, is that normal ? I can’t see it on the pictures/schematics.

  20. @ian lesnet – I’ve looked at the pinout, it’s 3v3 output and gnd that are soldered together. That explains the failing 3v3 pwm in the selftest!!
    I’ll scrape the solder off with an x-acto knife.

    thanks !

  21. ^ My mistake, I was looking at the chip the wrong way. The solder bridge is normal.
    The failing test was due to my rubbish paperclip jumpers :p
    I didn’t harm the bus pirate in any way!

  22. Boy, I’d love one of these and a couple of guys in the office would too, Wehn will it be on General release or possibly a pre-order 3.

    Also how often will there be firmware updates, do you plan to extend the library?

    Marc

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