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Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

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Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#1

Post by Timot05 »

Hey HN! We are the founders of atopile. We’re building a tool to describe electronics with code. Here is a quick demo: https://youtu.be/7-Q0XVpfW3Y

Could you imagine the pain of building an entire software product using only assembly code? That’s about how we felt designing hardware. We don’t currently have good ways to describe what we need, reuse existing designs and compile that description down to a product.

We started atopile to fix this. atopile is an open-source language and toolchain to describe circuits with code. The compiler is here: https://github.com/atopile/atopile Docs are here: https://atopile.io/getting-started/ . For a detailed deep dive designing an ESP32 module, see this video: https://youtu.be/eMWRwZOajdQ

We realized this was a problem in our previous jobs. Narayan and I (Tim) had to manually, draw and export all our electronic circuit boards. This lasted until our friend Matt, a software engineer, showed us his development workflow. All his projects were built, tested, and merged automatically via GitHub. So we asked: Can we build the same for hardware?

We observed that the ability to abstract electronics effectively hinged on using a language to describe the requirements, so we came up with the “ato” language. In ato, you can break down circuits into modules, components and interfaces. You can nest and connect those blocks with each other. Here is an example with an RP2040 microcontroller:

  import RP2040Kit from "rp2040/RP2040Kit.ato"
  import LEDIndicatorBlue from "generics/leds.ato"
  import LDOReg3V3 from "regulators/regulators.ato"
  import USBCConn from "usb-connectors/usb-connectors.ato"

  module Blinky:
    micro_controller = new RP2040Kit
    led_indicator = new LEDIndicatorBlue
    voltage_regulator = new LDOReg3V3
    usb_c_connector = new USBCConn

    usb_c_connector.power ~ voltage_regulator.power_in
    voltage_regulator.power_out ~ micro_controller.power
    micro_controller.gpio13 ~ led_indicator.input
    micro_controller.power.gnd ~ led_indicator.gnd

    led_indicator.resistor.value = 100ohm +/- 10%
From there, the compiler produces a netlist that describes how the circuit is connected and selects jelly-bean components for you (https://atopile.io/blog/2024/01/31/cloud-components/). Our next focus will be to add layout reuse, mathematical relations between values and define circuits by traits (similar to Rusts’).

At the moment, atopile is intended to design all types of printed circuit boards (PCB) with low to medium complexity. The circuit complexity that the compiler can handle will steadily increase until it becomes suited for production usage. We often get asked if the compiler is meant for chip design rather than PCBs, but that is not the case. The language is exclusive to PCBs. At least for now..!

A big part of why the software community is so prolific is thanks to open source and open core technology. The ability to share software packages with each other and efficiently chain tools together has made the software world an awesome place for developers. As hardware engineers, we would love our field to benefit from this as well. That’s why we’ve made atopile’s core open source (Apache 2.0). We plan to generate revenue by selling entreprise targeted features, similar to GitLab.

We would love to have your thoughts on the compiler! What’s your story in electronics? What would you want us to build?

Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#2

Post by Liftyee »

Looks really useful! As a hardware designer I've had plenty of copy pasting bits of schematics to duplicate common functionality. Seems like this could be really helpful in preventing mistakes and increasing quality once used to it.

Have you got any plans for defined interfaces/modularity so devices using SPI, I²C, etc. can be chained together without manually defining pin connections? Also, will there be support for importing schematics from other formats?

Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#4

Post by napowderly »

Liftyee wrote: post #2

Looks really useful! As a hardware designer I've had plenty of copy pasting bits of schematics to duplicate common functionality. Seems like this could be really helpful in preventing mistakes and increasing quality once used to it. Have you got any plans for defined interfaces/modularity so devices using SPI, I²C, etc. can be chained together without manually defining pin connections? Also, will there be support for…

We do have interfaces! They are super useful, I am very stoked that I dont have to remember which way around MISO/MOSI go any more.

Interfaces are just a collection of signals eg

  interface I2C:
    signal sda
    signal scl
    signal gnd
you can connect two together like so: micro.i2c ~ sensor.i2c

Importing schematics would be possible, but IMO not super valuable as all we could import would be the raw connectivity, a big benefit of our language is being able to add a layer of abstraction on that.

Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#6

Post by michaelt »

Very nice!

The state of electronics tooling has long been extremely bad - 99% of people who put a regulator into their schematic will want an appropriate input and output capacitor as the datasheet demands. 99% of people who put a microcontroller will want a crystal and a programming port and a reset pin pull-up. It's only because of closed source tools stuck in the stone age that the state of the art is to copy out of a PDF.

And multiple people working on the same design and merging their changes? Forget about it!

It'll be very exciting if we can move towards a more modular world, where designs can be composed.

Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#8

Post by Timot05 »

DenseComet wrote: post #5

Congratulations on the launch and good luck building a business around it! I remember running into you folks at OpenSauce last year and thinking just how useful it could be.

Thanks for the support! We will try get a booth at open sauce again this year. Hope to see you there :)

Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#10

Post by napowderly »

michaelt wrote: post #6

Very nice! The state of electronics tooling has long been extremely bad - 99% of people who put a regulator into their schematic will want an appropriate input and output capacitor as the datasheet demands. 99% of people who put a microcontroller will want a crystal and a programming port and a reset pin pull-up. It's only because of closed source tools stuck in the stone age that the state of the art is to copy out…

For sure, we definitely subscribe to works out of the box / path most taken. We have been working on adding equations to our language so we can solve component values based on requirements like output current and ripple for a regulator to get cap values for example. I hope in the future our component models will capture a good fraction of the info you have to go to the datasheet for today.
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