Workshops/Bus Pirate for dummies

Bus Pirate drop-in workshop

This workshop will cover some basic protocol sniffing with the popular Bus Pirate, a flexible tool which speeds up prototyping, by providing means (monitor and keyboard) of implementing serial communication with a device at the bit level.

Duration

2h max.

Topics

• Accessing the device
• Help menu
• Wiring
• Communicating

Learning the ropes

To access the Bus Pirate, via USB, we'll be using "screen" on Linux, though in theory it should work on OS X and telnet should work on Windows.

The Bus Pirate help menu

Learning the Bus Pirate language, which reminds me of l33t.

This is a statement:

\[/_\/_\/_\/_\]

You will learn what it means, and some more.

Wiring

We'll go over the connectors, plus do some basic checks with a multimeter to make sure we are good to go.

Low level communication

One of these two:

• Hitachi HM55B Compass Module

• Microchip TC3402 16-Bit Sigma-Delta AD Converter

will be used.

These integrated circuits are straighforward to wire up, have a simple serial protocol easy enough to implement, so provide a good starting point.

If you have any other you would like to sniff, bring it along, making sure there is a datasheet available.

Maybe the Wii nunchuk (I2C, I think) ?

Sure. Bring it along.