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Interfacing a new microchip can be a hassle. Breadboarding a circuit, writing code, hauling out the programmer, or maybe even prototyping a PCB. We never seem to get it right on the first try.

The 'Bus Pirate' is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips. Many serial protocols are supported at 0-5.5volts, more can be added.

Adafruit is the official US distributor of Ian Lesnet's Bus Pirate, each purchase directly supports Dangerous Prototypes! You may also want to pick up a probe set.

Protocols: 1-Wire, I2C, SPI, JTAG, asynchronous serial (UART), MIDI, PC keyboard, HD44780 LCDs, and generic 2- and 3-wire libraries for custom protocols.

Features:

  • USB interface, USB powered
  • 0-5.5volt tolerant pins
  • 0-6volt measurement probe
  • 1Hz-40MHz frequency measurement
  • 1kHz - 4MHz pulse-width modulator, frequency generator
  • On-board multi-voltage pull-up resistors
  • On-board 3.3volt and 5volt power supplies with software reset
  • Macros for common operations
  • Bus traffic sniffers (SPI, I2C)
  • A bootloader for easy USB firmware updates
  • Transparent USB->serial bridge mode
  • 10Hz-1MHz low-speed logic analyzer
  • Custom support in AVRDUDE, Flashrom
  • AVR STK500 v2 programmer clone
  • Scriptable from Perl, Python, etc.
  • Translations (currently Spanish and Italian)

The Bus Pirate - BPv3.6 [v3.6] appears in the following collections:

SKU AF-237