Bus pirate?

[Konrad]

This post by crenn (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showpost.php?p=342649&postcount=16) in the Bot invasion thread (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?p=343591#post343591) mentioned Dangerous Prototypes (http://dangerousprototypes.com/) - which sounded so exciting I immediately checked it out ... and found the Bus Pirate (http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate).

Interfaces with JTAG, SPI, I2C, UART, and a pile of other hardware protocols, supports some useful emulation modes, USB-RS232 pass-through, servo controlling, FPGA and CPLD programming, etc etc. And it's built on an (easily hacked/modified) PIC platform with embedded bootloader.

It seems like spending 30 bucks can remove (most of) the constant need to build/modify device programming boards every time I get my hands on some new (or old) uC part with incompatible pinouts and capabilities. I could just focus on the project without first working out the tools and interface every time I switch parts. For the record, it seems like I get stuck with a different controller part on every single project, and I'm a cheap bastard who hates shelling out $$$ for the proper device programmer and debugging hardware 'cuz building them is not hard at all, although it can be time consuming.

Has anyone worked with a Bus Pirate? Is it worth waiting a bit because it's the sort of product which is constantly being improved?

[crenn]

For a prototyping tool, I'd recommend the Bus Pirate or even the Versaloonhttp://versaloon.com/products.html#VersaloonMini which is based on the STM32 chips although that is more for programming/debugging. I'm currently in the process of acquiring all the components to build a Bus Pirate v3.5 SOIC after I got a free PCB from Dangerous Prototypes.

There is a little bit of a learning curve with the Bus Pirate, however it's pretty easy to use and it's getting easier to use. It's almost a must have in an electronics toolbox, if you don't have another those type of capabilities already (either in hardware or software), remember, a lot of the features are just software based.

[Konrad]

There is a learning curve with everything worthwhile anyways. In fact, that's part of the timesave I'm hoping the Bus Pirate might provide - learn how it works, then just let it work with new parts instead of having to learn on them too. It's a bit odd that I should bump into this now, since I've spent a lot of time in the last month very seriously considering the merits of building something of this sort myself, torn between deciding against because full testing/tweaking would be a major project in itself yet deciding in favour because I desperately need something of the sort which can save time.

I was seriously contemplating the LabJack before. Although, heehee, $400 for an overkill gizmo which would have to be modified with homebuilt interfaces is very much a second-best solution. Sure, I could plug it into scopes and such stuff and that's really cool ... but those aren't really things I need to do.

I plan to check out this Bus Pirate in detail. Looks promising (assuming it works as promised) and just can't go wrong for the price. My only real concern is whether 4-40MHz clock will be sufficient for runtime testing/debug of faster parts, sometimes they just cannot be slowed down because of delicate hardware timing issues, after all people put expensive high speed parts into some applications for a reason.

[crenn]

If you need faster parts, then most likely you need a custom PCB anyway!

All of the sensors I have would work easily with the bus pirate.