iButton Kits

1. The iButton Starter Kit (DS9092K, revision 4.0A, 5/15/97)

   Ordered May 1998 for $75.00 plus tax from Dallas (1-800-336-6933).

   Contents:

   • 1x DS1920-F5 temperature button
   • 2x DS1971-F5 256-bit EEPROM button
   • 4x DS1982-F5 1kbit "add-only" button
   • 1x DS1994L-F5 4kbit NVRAM plus time button
   • 1x DS1996L-F5 64kbit NVRAM button
   • 1x DS9097E "passive" serial-port adapter (DB25M to RJ11 socket). "EPROM Upgraded", meaning it has a socket for an external DC power supply which can be used to program EPROM buttons (maybe the 1982? or the 1971? I'm not sure).
   • 1x DS9092GT hand-held wand thingy, cable with RJ11 plug
   • 1x DS1402BR RJ11 plug on one end, fake iButton on other to plug into bus
   • 1x DS1401 4-socket iButton bus, just 4 ibutton sockets tied together
   • assorted mounting hardware, plastic holders, key fobs, hospital bracelets, sticky discs, badges
   • DS9092K User's Manual, Book of DS19xx iButton Standards, 50 Ways To Touch Memory, Automatic Identification Data Book.

2. The JavaButton Kit (DSJTK-001 Version 1.0)

   Ordered July 1998 for $50.00 plus tax from Dallas

   Contents:

   • 1x Java Button on a permanently-mounted angled plastic key fob.
   • 1x DS9097U "active" serial-port adapter (DB9F to RJ11 socket). Contains a DS2480 interface chip and (surprise) a DS1982 equivalent solder-mount device internally attached to the one-wire bus. I don't know why.
   • 1x DS1420D-DR8 "Blue Dot Receptor". Has an RJ11 plug at one end, the other has a pair of sockets with a blue plastic thingy in the middle where you can stick an iButton. The DS9097U+DS1420D-DR8 combo is available for $15 separately.
   • 1x piece of paper "Software Authorization Customer Registration Form" with instructions to download the software from http://www.ibutton.com/jibkit/index.html.
   • 1x exciting full-color brochure "Digital Accessories that Fit Your Lifestyle".
   • um, that's it.

3. The DS1411

   $21.30

   • DS1411 has the DS2480 "active" serial interface chip inside a DB9F dongle-shaped serial port plug. It has a cavity that just fits a single iButton (using a DS9098 "MicroCan Retainer" socket listed in the iButton data book). See the PDF datasheet for a picture. It is meant as a dongle, once you put an iButton in the socket you could put a sticker over the whole thing and you'd never know what was inside it. The DS1411 has (surprise) a DS1990A equivalent (id-only) hidden somewhere inside it, soldered down to the circuit board, so you could basically use it as a dongle even without adding a real iButton, if you didn't mind clever people writing microcontroller programs to spoof the one-wire protocol and replace the dongle. Keep the extra device in mind when trying to use the 'Read ROM' command: if you have a button in place, the two devices will conflict and the Read ROM checksum will fail. Use Search ROM instead. I find this interface handy to use with my laptop. There is a development kit on the Dallas FTP site for the DS1411, that emphasizes the "software authorization control" uses. Decent code.

4. The DS1820-PR35

   $5.43 each

   This is the solder-mount version of the DS1920 temperature iButton. It looks like a TO-92: a slightly-tall three-terminal plastic transistor case. One pin is ground, one is data, the third is an optional extra Vcc that could be useful if your One-Wire Bus driver can't supply the strong-pullup during the temperature conversion cycle.

There is a price list for some iButton devices on the iButton site, you have to turn on JavaScript to see it. There are prices for the basic memory iButtons ($2.30 for single DS1990A id-only buttons, $12 for single 4kNVRAM buttons). It has some adapters, some goofy button holder stuff, and some nebulously-defined "kits" with unspecified contents. Call Dallas and ask them what's in the kits before you buy them. (and tell me so I can put more information here).

ftp://ftp.dalsemi.com/pub/ has some downloadable software. Of note:

• crypto/cibapi15.tar.gz: DS2480 interface routines and crypto-button interface stuff.
• crypto/cibtools.tar.gz: Solaris executables for crypto interfaces.
• software_auth/jibkit/: Java button stuff
• software_auth/ds1410e/ds1411beta/ds1411k.tar.gz: DS2480 interface routines and dongle stuff.
• datasheets/: lots of datasheets, all postscript or PDF. Application notes too. Datasheet index is here. iButton-specific datasheet index is here. Dallas tends to have datasheets for kits too: look for datasheets named after the main part number with a "k" appended. Sometimes those datasheets are for software that is related to a kit: look around ftp.dalsemi.com .

Brian Warner <warner@lothar.com>