Bus Pirate

Bus Pirate
	Bus Pirate v3a
Developer	Dangerous Prototypes
Type	Debugger
Website	dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate

The Bus Pirate is a universal bus interface device designed for programming, debugging, and analyzing microcontrollers and other ICs. It was developed as an open-source hardware and software project.^[1]^[2]

Overview

The Bus Pirate was designed for debugging, prototyping, and analysing "new or unknown chips".^[1] Using a Bus Pirate, a developer can use a serial terminal to interface with a device, via such hardware protocols as SPI, I²C and 1-Wire.

The Bus Pirate is capable of programming low-end microcontrollers, such as Atmel AVRs and Microchip PICs. Programming using more advanced protocols such as JTAG and SWD is possible, but is discouraged due to hardware speed limitations.

The Bus Pirate v3.6 is based on an PIC24 MCU (SSOP), and communicates with a host computer with either a USB interface with a FT232RL (SSOP) or an on-chip USB module.

The Bus Pirate was designed by Ian Lesnet of Dangerous Prototypes.^[3]

Feature list

The Bus Pirate can communicate via the following serial protocols, with line levels of 0–5.5 volts: 1-Wire, I²C, SPI, JTAG, asynchronous serial, and MIDI.

It can receive input from a keyboard, and can output to a Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller.

Other features:

UART
2- and 3-wire libraries with bitwise pin control
0 – 6 volt measurement probe
1 Hz – 40 MHz frequency measurement
1 kHz – 4 MHz pulse-width modulator, frequency generator
On-board multi-voltage pull-up resistors
On-board 3.3 volt and 5 volt power supplies with software reset
Macros for common operations
Bus traffic sniffers (SPI, I²C)
A bootloader for easy firmware updates
Transparent USB -> serial mode
10 Hz – 1 MHz SUMP compatible low-speed logic analyzer
AVR STK500 v2 programmer clone, supported in AVRDude programmer software

Generational differences

	Bus Pirate v3.6	Bus Pirate v4.0^[4]
Development status	Current stable version: Mature	Experimental
Dimensions (mm)	60×37	60×37
PIC microcontroller	PIC24FJ64GA002	PIC24FJ256GB106
Flash memory (kB)	64	256
SRAM (kB)	8	16
I/O pins	5 (5×2 pin header)	7 (6×2 pin header)
USB interface	FTDI FT232RL	PIC24-integrated

v3.x models uses a 5×2 header for ribbon cable, whereas the v4.x models uses a 6×2 header.

The size of the circuit board was changed to 60 mm x 37 mm in the Bus Pirate v3.6 and up so it would match the mounting holes for the "Sick of Beige" DP6037 case.^[5]^[6]