[1][2] The Bus Pirate was designed for debugging, prototyping, and analysing "new or unknown chips".

[1] Using a Bus Pirate, a developer can use a serial terminal to interface with a device, via such hardware protocols as SPI, I2C and 1-Wire.

The Bus Pirate is capable of programming low-end microcontrollers, such as Atmel AVRs and Microchip PICs.

Programming using more advanced protocols such as JTAG and SWD is possible, but is discouraged due to hardware speed limitations.

The Bus Pirate was designed by Ian Lesnet of Dangerous Prototypes.