Product idea review - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2023, 04:54:11 pm
content: Hi,I'm posting an idea I have about a product, because it's more focused on engineers, I would like to get an opinion on it.I always had the problem with not having every adapter at hand, or couldn't do the job with a logic analyzer.My idea is to create a small product that will house all the popular protocols; UART, SPI, I2C.It will use USB and directly connect to the users computer and enable the user to use the protocols through software of course.Next to the hardware I'm planning on adding software examples in C or/and Python.The upside of this device is that you will have all popular protocols at hand, you can select voltages (so no need to solder or get another adapter at a different voltage) and it is plug and play.Would this be useful for you?What kind of protocols are also needed? CAN Bus?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2023, 04:59:32 pm
content: Is not this just Bus Pirate?I personally use my own thing for this (https://github.com/ataradov/dgw), but it is not a full board/project, just a quick hack firmware for Atmel dev. kit.

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2023, 05:04:00 pm
content: Didn't know bus pirate even excists! Basically it is the same yes. The focus is more on non-scripting, just plug and play. You plug it in, select the COM port and it just works.All protocols would be separate.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2023, 05:23:13 pm
content: TotalPhase Aardvark does that. But it is severely overpriced for what it is.I'm sure there are some GUIs for BusPirate already, it is a very popular product.You can obviously make a new one, but I would not expect it to be a huge success. In practice it is rate that you want GUI for I2C/SPI devices. Any action with them requires multiple transfers typically, so a simple GUI would not work, you would need to have some sort of scripting/batch capability. And at that point you might as well use a Python script.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2023, 05:50:57 pm
content: Another related project is:https://micropython.org/It's mostly python ported to a bunch of different microcontrollers (ESP32, STM32, NXP and more) and extended with libraries for the peripherals of those uC's. So you can either use the Python REPL or write some script that you execute from your uC.

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2023, 01:33:58 am
content: I often need to visualize data from various sensors having i2c/spi/i2s/232/485/parallel port/such kind of interfaces. To make a tests I connect them to stm32 board and write small firmware which then pumps data through stm32's usart to the computer. On the computer side I have small cpp program which loads the data and vizualizes it using Sciter GUI. Some sensors need to be configured, so i use the same connection to send some commands back to stm32, which forwards it to some sensor ic or module. Some modules need external clock signal, or interrupt inputs/outputs. I used logic rarely, mostly scope with the above arrangement. Sometimes i n ed it to be galvanically isolated from computer. Maybe this information will be useful.

author: coromonadalix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2023, 01:49:37 am
content: mmm Even some logic analyser have theses ...not being rude but .. you may never get popularity with already known and popular products ...https://www.adafruit.com/product/4234https://hackaday.io/project/118129-byte-theiftiguardhttps://www.crowdsupply.com/securinghw/tigard#productshttps://flipperzero.one/

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2023, 02:38:29 am
content: it is possible if he goes brute force method, which is making a lot of real use cases, for each module sold on Amazon, adafruit, sparkfun and other websites. Videos, website page for each use case, etc. Need to invest time in money. I had a similar idea for industrial application, but it required access to many expensive industrial equipment, such as high end cnc machines, old but high end communication equipment. There are some products really cheap to manufacture, but without compatibility it would not sell.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 08, 2023, 04:53:24 pm
content: I purchased Bus Pirate recently. It seems to be a stale product with old examples that do not work with latest Python.