Bus Pirate

I have a tracking number now for my Rigol scope, and it is just a matter of time before that bad boy shows up on my doorstep.  To beef up my arsenal, I also have a Bus Pirate on the way.

Another Tool in the Toolbox

This is a neat little board that can be used to spy on serial interfaces like SPI, I2C, etc.  The price is right at $28 plus another $5 or so for the probes.  Shipping is cheap as dirt, but it is out of somewhere in China, so I am looking at anywhere from 10-30 days on delivery.  Hopefully it is less than that.  Once I've got this, I can listen in on what the Atmega in the Davis Weather Station is telling the CC1021 RF chip to do.  Should be interesting to dig into.

I had also wanted to order myself up an Open Workbench Logic Sniffer (OLS), but the boys at Dangerous Prototypes are sold out.  Sparkfun bought up all their stock, and are asking another $20 for it.  While not a ton of cash, it is the principal of the thing.  Think I'll just wait until DP replenishes their stock, which won't be long.

In the meantime, I'm reading Atmel data sheets and looking at CPU emulators, when I'm not researching a replacement for my ancient Radio Shack analog multimeter.  Right now I'm like the Uni-Trend UT71A.  It is 40,000 count resolution, a USB interface, and temperature measurement capability.  I like.  The data logging capability is neutered, but who cares when you have a USB interface?