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The Bus Pirate is a universal serial interface tool that makes talking to chips fast and easy. It was a collection of scripts I wrote in grad school way back in the 2000s. In 2008 I wrote about it at Hack a Day, and then in 2009 I started Dangerous Prototypes, later Dirty PCBs and then organized Hack Camp Shenzhen for several years.

We were ready with an ARM/ICE40 Bus Pirate in 2019, but we all know what happened next. When the RP2040 launched we knew the perfect chip for a long term design had finally arrived.

I first gave Seeed Studio the sourcing guide (now seen in the components section of the hardware guide)in 2022. In early 2023 the PIC chip used in the Bus Pirate v3 became unavailable, so sent the sourcing guide again. This summer it was apparent there wasn’t any movement on that front, so I decided to just do it myself.

That turned out to be the best available solution because we were able to do everything precisely how we wanted with our own team in Shenzhen. Not only that, it made quick release small batch hardware fun again, so we currently have 3 other boards out for assembly/FCC testing.

To clear up some concerns in the comments, yes I’m Ian from Dangerous Prototypes. There is in fact a Bus Pirate 5, it’s shipping now. The weird AI spam links in comments are definitely not me, I’m sitting here sweating over I2C and UART modes.

We’re not using the wiki/forum/etc at Dangerous Prototypes because all that software is so ancient and creaky I don’t have the patience to fight with it endlessly. The new stuff, like docusaurus, discourse and ghost are fantastic and modern.

I know, yet another forum and login. I enabled github logins to help ease that burden a bit. It would be great to have some company here, but I’ll just keep posting into the void for the time being :slight_smile:

We’ll have videos and stuff soon!

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This is no longer the void !! Looking forward to supporting the development and buying the Bus Pirate v5…
I still remember meeting you during one of your famous electronic market visits around the world !!
Hope to meet up again sometime !

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Hello! Thank you for stopping by! I was getting a bit lonely :slight_smile: Can you PM (private message me) your address? I’ll try to have hardware sent out to you tomorrow before the shenzhen office is closed for a week. Just curious what you think.

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Thanks for the PM! So glad you got in touch!

The office just sent me a box of stuff before they go on holiday tomorrow. I had then send a Bus Pirate board for you, and since you’re so close I’ll just mail it in the post. I’ll also print you a case, but fair warning that my PETG is old and has gotten a bit humid, so the quality isn’t great.

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I have the first unit to ship, and I can attest that it’s real and IT’S FINALLY HERE!!! Thank for all of your hard work and dedication!
-Cheers!!! S/N#: 001

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So glad it arrived! Thanks for the post. We sent one of our SLA enclosure prototypes because you were the first to order :slight_smile:

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I can’t thank you enough! Even having the SLA enclosure is an honor, knowing molded was the direction you intended to go. I am gratefully for this masterpiece and will hold onto it proudly!

Congrats on making it to HN! I am really keen to get my hands on one of these. I see the cable kits and preview version on dirty PCBs website but no enclosure? Would I need to print one myself?

REV8 is a preview version, I put it up for developers and anyone curious what I’m working on. You can print an enclosure, but I’ve also mailed a bunch of 3D printed enclosures and have a few left.

REV9 is at FCC testing now. It will be the initial production version and go in the injection molded case. The main difference is a BOM cleanup to use more common/cheaper parts. Cases should be ready in a few weeks, but I’m not exactly sure because the Chinese national holiday fell during the middle of our tooling contract.