After building my first PCB a while back and starting to attempt to use it, I decided that the smart thing to do would be to finish build #2, which is a Bus Pirate Demo Board.  This demo board has a handful of chips that can be used to test a Bus Pirate (or in my case, a Bus Pirate Shield): 5 EEPROMs, a temperature sensor, a digital-analog converter, and a real-time clock.

My biggest hold-ups were ordering parts… I certainly have a bit to learn about SMD sizes, as I ordered some that were a bit small:

Too small!!!

Too small!!!

Finally, after a few extra parts orders, I finished it.  I’m getting better at soldering SMD devices, although I should probably invest in a soldering station with adjustable temperature control and a better assortment of tips.  My Radio Shack iron runs very hot.

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The completed board.

This will make an appearance in a forthcoming blog post, particularly after I get more into using the Bus Pirate Arduino Shield.

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Category: Equipment

About the Author

Andrew is the owner of this blog and enjoys computer programming, building things, and photography. He's a pretty busy guy, which explains why updates to this blog are so infrequent.

2 Responses to Dangerous Prototypes Bus Pirate Demo Board Free PCB Build

  1. EschatologicalEngineer says:

    I’ve had a hard time sourcing many of the components for that version of the demo board. I’ll have to keep looking around. Thanks for sharing!

    • Andrew says:

      I found everything at Mouser, but to get the *right* parts, I had to look at the schematic on http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/images/d/d3/Cct-BusPirate-demo.png (ignoring the 3-axis accelerometer) and not the part list on the main page. I did that initially and ended up with a few extra parts that weren’t used for this.

      I think the total part cost was around $25, but that is based purely on my recollection of what I paid before shipping and doesn’t account for my practice of ordering at least two of any part and always ordering more than what I need.


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