ESP32 Bit Pirate is open-source firmware that turns your device into a multi-protocol development and analysis tool, inspired by the legendary Bus Pirate.
It supports sniffing, sending, scripting, and interacting with various digital protocols (I2C, UART, 1-Wire, SPI, etc.) via a serial terminal or web-based CLI. It also communicates with radio protocols like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Sub-GHz and RFID.
Turn a $5 ESP32-S3 into a browser-based hardware workbench.The Bit Pirate firmware is complemented by scripting, hardware dock, extension, adapters, browser tools, documentation and practical embedded workflows to enable comprehensive hardware debugging and development with serial interfaces or Wi-Fi connectivity.
Coming from a Commodore PET 2001 in 1977, I have to say I am biased towards the green phosphor colored text on black! Not speaking to flow, layout, or the filler text here...
Our focus has been on the "network side" by running a SSH server instead of a Web Server and multiplexing protocols via SSH sessions.
Our project is admittedly not as mature as the ESP32 Bit Pirate but OTOH we run with Rust Embedded and support other targets than Espressif (currently experimental on RPI Pico2 and Sipeed BL616).
I can lend a hand, after spending a painful 10s on the website (which really needs some thought put into it if this is a serious project).
If you have any moderate experience with hardware hacking, you would be aware of a handy little hardware device called the Bus Pirate, which has been around in various forms for many years. It is designed to be like a Swiss army knife for connecting to devices and inspecting and debugging them. For example, it can decode/encode various common (and uncommon) digital protocols that are used by chips and hardware devices to communicate with each other.
This project... it appears that someone has (with a significant amount of AI-assistance, if the website is anything to go by) produced firmware for ESP32 devices which aims to replicate the functionality of a Bus Pirate. This is notable because ESP32 boards are much cheaper and widely available.
Without looking much into it though, my instinct tells me that it would be significantly more limited than the purpose-built Bus Pirate hardware.
A casual look around the office. Not a good representative selection for the entire population but counting to 10 and asking, everyone used ai in some fashion, extrapolate the data and you get 100%. (Not a ai first office even)
A lot of time accessibility is about that extra effort one can't get with tight development budgets. I apply generous amounts of butter while I keep the thing dry and let it be otherwise accessible at the same time.
Looks like an extremely cool concept, but I'm wary about how many bugs I'd run into trying to use it if the code has had as little effort put into it as the website.
I think I'll keep just making up basic sketches when I need to work with one of these protocols - it's also nice that if I do that, when I see it work, I know I can expand functionality from there into what I need.
the firmware is in a very different state from the website. The codebase has a test suite, and hundreds of people are already using it, so it’s had a lot more work and real world testing
"every protocol"? that's pretty impressive. We should stock up on them in case aliens ever come to visit, so we can understand their communications protocol
You can’t submit the same link twice. I’d already shared the firmware repository before, so this time I posted the website, mainly for the new web tools
Looks like a tremendously useful tool to do such things as BIOS reflashing (i.e., Coreboot, Libreboot, Canoeboot) on one's own hardware.
In theory, any Single Board Computer (Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, FPGA-based-board, etc.) or microcontroller-based circuit board with GPIO pins that can handle the speed/frequency and the voltage of what's being communicated with, could in theory work (if the appropriate software/protocols are implemented), but ESP32 microcontroller boards, being as cheap and ubiquitous as they are, are good candidates for this task!
Anyway, ESP32 Bit Pirate looks very promising in this arena!
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[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 46.5 ms ] threadIt supports sniffing, sending, scripting, and interacting with various digital protocols (I2C, UART, 1-Wire, SPI, etc.) via a serial terminal or web-based CLI. It also communicates with radio protocols like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Sub-GHz and RFID.
Turn a $5 ESP32-S3 into a browser-based hardware workbench.The Bit Pirate firmware is complemented by scripting, hardware dock, extension, adapters, browser tools, documentation and practical embedded workflows to enable comprehensive hardware debugging and development with serial interfaces or Wi-Fi connectivity.
https://github.com/geo-tp/ESP32-Bit-Pirate
Ok but is there a list of supported boards? Couldn't find it.
I have been getting into this as well. I had ChatGPT plan up a new UART adapter and similar.
That’s the whole problem. No one read it before publishing.
https://github.com/geo-tp/ESP32-Bit-Pirate
Anyway, I find the tiny C3 to be much more stable than other versions. It is a bit sad the very few projects support it.
I'm the co-author and project lead of SSH-Stamp:
https://github.com/brainstorm/ssh-stamp
Our focus has been on the "network side" by running a SSH server instead of a Web Server and multiplexing protocols via SSH sessions.
Our project is admittedly not as mature as the ESP32 Bit Pirate but OTOH we run with Rust Embedded and support other targets than Espressif (currently experimental on RPI Pico2 and Sipeed BL616).
We need testers :D
https://github.com/geo-tp/ESP32-Bit-Pirate
If you have any moderate experience with hardware hacking, you would be aware of a handy little hardware device called the Bus Pirate, which has been around in various forms for many years. It is designed to be like a Swiss army knife for connecting to devices and inspecting and debugging them. For example, it can decode/encode various common (and uncommon) digital protocols that are used by chips and hardware devices to communicate with each other.
This project... it appears that someone has (with a significant amount of AI-assistance, if the website is anything to go by) produced firmware for ESP32 devices which aims to replicate the functionality of a Bus Pirate. This is notable because ESP32 boards are much cheaper and widely available.
Without looking much into it though, my instinct tells me that it would be significantly more limited than the purpose-built Bus Pirate hardware.
https://github.com/geo-tp/ESP32-Bit-Pirate
It's high time that Github creates a disclosure flag for LLM usage - it's already mandated in the EU for some kinds of media.
Take a look at the codebase or just try it out, and make up your own mind
A lot of time accessibility is about that extra effort one can't get with tight development budgets. I apply generous amounts of butter while I keep the thing dry and let it be otherwise accessible at the same time.
Just because you are forced to use AI on the clock doesn't mean you have to for personal projects.
Don't forget the emdash and overuse of emoji.
I think I'll keep just making up basic sketches when I need to work with one of these protocols - it's also nice that if I do that, when I see it work, I know I can expand functionality from there into what I need.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409306
In theory, any Single Board Computer (Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, FPGA-based-board, etc.) or microcontroller-based circuit board with GPIO pins that can handle the speed/frequency and the voltage of what's being communicated with, could in theory work (if the appropriate software/protocols are implemented), but ESP32 microcontroller boards, being as cheap and ubiquitous as they are, are good candidates for this task!
Anyway, ESP32 Bit Pirate looks very promising in this arena!