Hands On: Bus Pirate 5

February 12, 2024 by 24 Comments

If you’ve been involved with electronics and hardware hacking for awhile, there’s an excellent chance you’ve heard of the Bus Pirate. First introduced on the pages of Hackaday back in 2008 by creator Ian Lesnet, the open hardware multi-tool was designed not only as away to easily tap into a wide array of communication protocols, but to provide various functions that would be useful during hardware development or reverse engineering. The Bus Pirate could talk to your I2C and SPI devices, while also being able to measure frequencies, check voltages, program chips, and even function as a logic analyzer or oscilloscope.

Bus Pirate 3, circa 2012

The Bus Pirate provided an incredible number of tools at a hobbyist-friendly price, and it wasn’t long before the device became so popular that it achieved a milestone which only a few hardware hacking gadgets can boast: its sales started to get undercut by cheap overseas clones. Of course, as an open hardware device, this wasn’t really a problem. If other companies wanted to crank out cheap Bus Pirates, that’s fine. It freed Ian up to research a next-generation version of the device.

But it turns out that was easier said than done. It’s around this point that the Bus Pirate enters what might be considered its Duke Nukem Forever phase. It took 15 years to release the sequel to 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D because the state-of-the-art in video games kept changing, and the developers didn’t want to be behind the curve. Similarly, Ian and his team spent years developing and redeveloping versions of the Bus Pirate that utilized different hardware platforms, such as the STM32 and ICE40 FPGA. But each time, there would be problems sourcing components, or something newer and more interesting would be released.

But then in 2021 the Raspberry Pi Pico hit the scene, and soon after, the bare RP2040 chip. Not only were the vast I/O capabilities of the new microcontroller a perfect fit for the Bus Pirate, but the chip was cheap and widely available. Finally, after years of false starts, the Bus Pirate 5 was born.

I was able to grab one of the first all-new Bus Pirates off the production line in January, and have been spending the last week or so playing around with it. While there’s definitely room for improvement on the software side of things, the hardware is extremely promising, and I’m very excited to be see how this new chapter in the Bus Pirate story plays out.

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Bus Pirate 5 Now Shipping

January 25, 2024 by 34 Comments

It’s happened to all of us at one time or another. There’s some component sitting on the bench, say an I2C sensor, a new display, or maybe a flash chip, and you want to poke around with it. So you get out the breadboard, wire it to a microcontroller, write some code, flash it…you get the idea. Frankly, it’s all kind of a hassle. Which is why [Ian Lesnet] created the Bus Pirate: a USB multi-tool designed to get you up and running with a new piece of hardware as quickly as possible.

Now, after years of development, the Bus Pirate 5 is available for purchase. Completely redesigned to take advantage of the impressive I/O capabilities of the RP2040, the new Bus Pirate also features a 240 x 320 IPS LCD that can show real-time voltage data and pin assignments. But despite the new display, and the bevy of RGB LEDs lurking under the injection molded enclosure, the primary interface for the device remains the VT100 terminal interface — now with the addition of a color status bar running along the bottom.

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A Pi Pico plugged into a breadboard, with an I2C OLED display connected to it

Need An USB-I2C Adapter? Use Your Pico!

October 31, 2022 by 12 Comments

Given its abundance and simplicity, the RP2040 has no doubt become a favourite for USB peripheral building – in particular, USB-connected tools for electronics experiments. Today, we see one more addition to our Pico-based tool arsenal – a USB-I2C adapter firmware for RP2040 by [Renze Nicolai]. This is a reimplementation of the ATTiny-based I2C-Tiny-USB project and complies to the same protocol – thus, it’s compatible with the i2c-tiny-usb driver that’s been in the Linux kernel for ages. Just drag&drop the .uf2, run a script on your Linux system, and you will get a /dev/i2c-X device you can work with from userspace code, or attach other kernel drivers to.

The software will work with any RP2040 devboard – just connect your I2C devices to the defined pins and you’ll have them show up in i2cdetect output on your Linux workstation. As a demo, [Renze] has written a userspace Python driver for one of these SSD1306 128×64 OLEDs, and gives us a commandline that has the driver accept output of an ffmpeg command capturing your main display’s contents, duplicating your screen on the OLED – in a similar fashion that we’ve seen with the “HDMI” I2C-driven display a few months back. Everything you might need is available on the GitHub page, including usage instructions and examples, and the few scripts you can use if you want to add an udev rule or change the I2C clock frequency.

Just to name a few purposes, you can use a Pi Pico as a tool for SWD, JTAG, CAN, a logic analyser with both digital and analog channels, or even as a small EMP-driven chip glitching tool. The now-omnipresent $3 Pi Pico boards, it seems, are a serious contender to fondly remembered hacker tools of the past, such as the legendary BusPirate.

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Reverse Engineering A Saab’s In-Dash Display

April 16, 2020 by 7 Comments

For [Leigh Oliver], there’s something undeniably appealing about the green on black instrumentation of the 2003 Saab 9-3 Gen2. Perhaps it’s because the Infotainment Control Module 2 (ICM2) screen brings a bit of that classic Matrix vibe to the daily commute. Whatever the reason, it seemed the display deserved better than to be stuck showing the nearly 20 year old stock user interface. Luckily, you can control it via I2C.

Though as you might expect, that fact wasn’t obvious at first. [Leigh] had to start by taking the ICM2 apart and reverse engineering the display board. With a multimeter and high resolution photographs of both sides of the PCB, all of the traces were mapped out and recreated in KiCAD. This might not have been strictly necessary, but it did serve as good practice for using KiCAD; a worthwhile tip for anyone else looking to build practical experience creating schematics.

With everything mapped out, [Leigh] was able to connect a BusPirate V3 up to the board and pretty quickly determine it was using I2C to control the display. As far as figuring out how to repurpose existing displays goes, this was perhaps the best possible scenario. It even allowed for creating a display library based on Adafruit_GFX which offers graphical capabilities far beyond what the ICM2 module itself is capable of.

Even with so much progress made, this project is really just getting started. [Leigh] has managed to put some impressive imagery on the black and green Saab display, but the hardware side of things is still being worked on. For example, there’s some hope that an I2C multiplexer would allow the display to easily and quickly be switched between “stock” mode and whatever enhanced version comes about thanks to the new libraries and an ESP8266 hiding behind the dashboard.

If you don’t have a sufficiently vintage Saab to take advantage of this project, don’t worry. Tapping into the OBD port with an OLED display can get you similar results on a wide range of vehicles.

A Tiny IDE For Your ATtiny

February 8, 2019 by 23 Comments

When writing code for the ATtiny family of microcontrollers such as a the ATtiny85 or ATtiny10, people usually use one of two methods: they either add support for the chip in the Arduino IDE, or they crack open their text editor of choice and do everything manually. Plus of course there are the stragglers out there using Eclipse. But [Wayne Holder] thinks there’s a better way.

The project started out as a simple way for [Wayne] to program the ATtiny10 in C under Mac OS, but has since evolved into an open source, cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) for programming a wide range of ATtiny chips in C, C++, or Assembly. Not only does it integrate the source code editor and programmer, but it even bundles in documentation for common variants of the chips including block diagrams and pinouts; making it a true one-stop-shop for ATtiny hacking.

His IDE runs under Java, including OpenJDK, and [Wayne] provides a stable pre-built executable for those who don’t want to clone the whole GitHub repository. He’s included the GNU/AVR toolchains, though notes that testing so far has been limited to Mac OS, and he’s interested in feedback from Windows and Linux users. Assembly is done either with GNU AVR-AS, or an assembler of his own design, though the latter is currently limited to the ATTiny10.

To actually get the code onto the chip, the IDE supports using the Arduino as a programmer as well as dedicated hardware like the BusPirate or the USBasp. If you go the Arduino route, [Wayne] has even come up with a little adapter board which he’s made available through OSH Park to help wrangle the diminutive chips.

The ATtiny10 might have something of a learning curve, but in exchange this family of tiny microcontrollers offers an incredible amount of capability. When you’re working with what’s essentially a programmable grain of rice, the only limit is your own creativity.

How To Build Your Own Google AIY Without The Kit

May 30, 2017 by 52 Comments

Google’s voice assistant has been around for a while now and when Amazon released its Alexa API and ported the PaaS Cloud code to the Raspberry Pi 2 it was just a matter of time before everyone else jumped on the fast train to maker kingdom. Google just did it in style.

Few know that the Google Assistant API for the Raspberry Pi 3 has been out there for some time now but when they decided to give away a free kit with the May 2017 issues of MagPi magazine, they made an impression on everyone. Unfortunately the world has more makers and hackers and the number of copies of the magazine are limited.

In this writeup, I layout the DIY version of the AIY kit for everyone else who wants to talk to a cardboard box. I take a closer look at the free kit, take it apart, put it together and replace it with DIY magic. To make things more convenient, I also designed an enclosure that you can 3D print to complete the kit. Lets get started.

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ESP-ing A Philips Sound System.

January 5, 2017 by 42 Comments

IoT-ifying old stuff is cool. Or even new, offline stuff. It seems to be a trend. And it’s sexy. Yes, it is. Why are people doing this, you may ask: we say why not? Why shouldn’t a toaster be on the IoT? Or a drill press? Or a radio? Yes, a radio.

[Dr. Wummi] just added another device to the IoT, the Internet of Thongs as he calls it. It’s a Philips MCM205 Micro Sound System radio. He wanted to automate his radio but his original idea of building a setup with an infrared LED to remotely control it failed. He blamed it to “some funky IR voodoo”.  So he decided to go for an ESP8266 based solution with a NodeMCU. ESP8266 IR remotes have been known to work before but maybe those were just not voodoo grade.

After opening the radio up, he quickly found that the actual AM/FM Radio was a separate module. The manufacturer was kind enough to leave the pins nicely labelled on the mainboard. Pins labelled SCL/SDA hinted that AM/FM module spoke I²C. He tapped in the protocol via Bus Pirate and it was clear that the radio had an EEPROM somewhere on the main PCB. A search revealed a 24C02 IC in the board, which is a 2K I²C EEPROM. So far so good but there were other functionalities left to control, like volume or CD playing. For that, he planned to tap into the front push button knob. The push button had different resistors and were wired in series so they generated different voltages at the main board radio ADC Pins. He tried to PWM with the NodeMCU to simulate this but it just didn’t work.

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