The Everything Interface: Desktop to Chip [USB to SPI, I2C, JTAG, UART, SWD...]

The USB-to-digital Swiss army knife (FT2232H) is available in a super handy package: the Tigard multi-protocol tool for hardware hacking.

See how I get Python talking SPI and I2C from a computer, to quickly develop and understand chip APIs. This thing can also program flash memory, microcontrollers, and FPGAs, do JTAG and SWD, level-shift to anything between 1.8 and 5 Volts and is all around pretty cool and useful.

** Resources **

The Tigard documentation is at: https://github.com/tigard-tools/tigard
and you can get it at
https://www.crowdsupply.com/securingh...
or (EU) https://1bitsquared.de/products/tigard

The FTDI FT2232H datasheet: https://ftdichip.com/wp-content/uploa...

PyFTDI, a favorite for using the computer to talk to stuff in Python: https://eblot.github.io/pyftdi/featur...

The code used to get the Tigard managing the PCF8575 and controlling the Caravel processor is available at:
https://github.com/psychogenic/psycho...

If you're curious about the Caravel SoC, you can find out more at
https://caravel-harness.readthedocs.i...
and the housekeeping SPI stuff is at
https://caravel-harness.readthedocs.i...