Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

withdiode.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 270 posts

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#231

Post by andoma »

shriek wrote: post #162
synack wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evince on Linux is by far the best program I've found for reading large PDFs. It's worth the trouble to setup a VM or WSL just to run Evince if you're not natively on Linux.

I've never had to read a large PDFs (probably, ~400 pages) but what's so great about Evince? Is it just speed or is it because of it's features?

One feature I really like is that if you hover over a link Evince previews the target of the link in a little box. Perfect for "see Table X on page Y"

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#233

Post by defactoPun »

pkolaczk wrote: post #189

This illustrates a problem with many "modern" applications. My first impression: "Oh, that looks nice. Looks like in real life". Then I tried using it and found that it is clunky and slow to the point it is barely usable and I would much faster build the real circuit on a real breadboard instead.

but i guess that's the point, you have to have the breadboard and components first. If in a stitch, maybe this would do for that moment.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#235

Post by relaxing »

alar44 wrote: post #141
analog31 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tangent, but having worked with digital circuits for 40 years, the improvements in chips have made circuit construction -- even breadboarding -- vastly more forgiving than ever before. I've run 10 MHz clocks on breadboards and 100 MHz SPI bus on 2 layer boards that were not designed with extreme care. And, it's a fast precision ADC that's meeting its datasheet specs on that board. No doubt the parasitics an…

I've been doing multi chip stuff with 16MHz Atmels with no issues just using a de-coupleing cap on the Vins. Did it not used to be that easy?

You say multi chip, but what are the signals going between chips?

Imagine all the peripherals baked into your uc were separate DIPs, and you had to worry about high speed signals going everywhere.

And yeah, all the parts were less robust and hadn’t evolved to be tolerant of less than perfect conditions.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#237

Post by Kiboneu »

alphabetter wrote: post #200
IIAOPSW wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to rig a feedback loop between a lamp and a photoresistor but it isn't working. Do you know if the photoresistor actually reads in light generated by other circuit components, or is it just supposed to simulate a variable resistor responding to light from outside the circuit?

I've contributed quite a lot to Paul's simulator, including doing the port so it runs natively in the browser. The photoresistor is just controlled by the slider in the side-bar. It doesn't respond to lights in the circuit. There is an "optocoupler" under "active building blocks" that does connect optically. I've seen a few requests to add feedback that occurs outside the electrical domain - light is one, but also fo…

Thanks for your contributions. I played circuit.js obsessively during high school (as well as some of the other simulators). It was just way more intuitive than spice. I picked up Art of Electronics around that time.

Ten years later, just the other day I was using it to prototype some filter and resonator circuits.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#238

Post by JCM9 »

“Doesn’t look like it was made in 2003.”

Sometimes in tech we don’t do a good job of recognizing that a problem is essentially “solved” and further “innovation” isn’t helping. The reason why stuff looked like “it was made in 2003” was because that essentially solved the problem. All the extra iterations on top of that arguably didn’t help.

A lot could be said of many forms of web design too. The basic designs of the late 90s and early 2000s were very functional. A lot of the junk out there today looks flashy but is borderline terrible at actually communicating easily navigable information. There are good exceptions today, and to my point those are broadly things that didn’t try and reinvent the wheel through unnecessary “innovation” in “design.”

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#239

Post by theodric »

JCM9 wrote: post #238

“Doesn’t look like it was made in 2003.” Sometimes in tech we don’t do a good job of recognizing that a problem is essentially “solved” and further “innovation” isn’t helping. The reason why stuff looked like “it was made in 2003” was because that essentially solved the problem. All the extra iterations on top of that arguably didn’t help. A lot could be said of many forms of web design too. The basic designs of the…

Yes! Somebody had to say it!

We thrive on novelty, especially people drawn to tech. With the pace of change in the early years of modern tech, making things constantly change appearance was natural and unavoidable, so we've come to expect it, but some things are eventually good enough. Chairs, sinks, toilets, plates-- there may be edge cases of radical divergences from their settled forms, but for the most part, they're stable and consistent.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#240

Post by Teknoman117 »

fleventynine wrote: post #172
Teknoman117 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been a funny thing for me. I'm not an electrical engineer, at all. My electrical knowledge is an introductory electromagnetics course I had to take in college that I've mostly forgotten, reading/watching EEVblog, other internet sources, playing around with cheap and/or old parts, reading whatever I can find, etc. I've made some retrocomputing boards ( 4 layer boards can be had for very cheap these days (JLCPCB…

> "just do yourself a favor and get the 4 layers boards so you can make ground and power planes" In general, you should avoid power planes on 4 layer boards if you can. They tend to cause a lot of trouble with return currents when signals jump from the top layer to the bottom layer through a via. Prefer using ground planes for both inner layers and make sure you have ground return vias near every signal via. https://…

Thanks! I'll check it out!
Post reply on HN