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Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

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

#11

Post by Joel_Mckay »

The Net-list stage of abstraction is the easy part, but auto-routing is not.

People have tried many times to build a universal router with physics awareness for decades. The issue is in the real world there are countless edge cases where the EE must make a decision on the layout.

For low speed digital design... routers have partially worked since the 90's, but for most other things the edge cases make it counter-productive to automate.

EEs are good people to have around, and some know how to build things reliably.

Have a wonderful day, and I really hope the project does well. =)

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

#12

Post by mawildoer »

topspin wrote: post #9
anon291 wrote: post #3

I love that this is human-readable plain text. Plain text is almost always the best format for anything.

Text puts the problem squarely into the sights of generative models.

Absolutely! With only a few dozen lines of context to pick up the syntax, copilot is already able to make useful contributions like configuring regulators and filters.

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

#13

Post by quailfarmer »

topspin wrote: post #9
anon291 wrote: post #3

I love that this is human-readable plain text. Plain text is almost always the best format for anything.

Text puts the problem squarely into the sights of generative models.

Maybe one day, but I’ve asked the various models basic EE interview questions, and it’s painfully obvious that while it can make a paragraph that has the right words, it’s incapable of reasoning spatially, or describing complex connections. My job is secure (for this year).

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

#15

Post by napowderly »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #11

The Net-list stage of abstraction is the easy part, but auto-routing is not. People have tried many times to build a universal router with physics awareness for decades. The issue is in the real world there are countless edge cases where the EE must make a decision on the layout. For low speed digital design... routers have partially worked since the 90's, but for most other things the edge cases make it counter-prod…

For sure, we are starting with the schematic/requirements side of things and will push in the layout direction soon. We have started with some simple layout snippet reuse that is available today. My experience with autorouters is they do not have a good understanding of the problem, we hope to improve that by being able to capture more information about the circuit, for example physical values like voltage and current are captured today.

Our goal generally is to automate tasks that are boring/repetitive like multi-day reviews of big schematics to see if anything accidentally changed. Definitely building a lever for EEs, not a replacement.

Thanks!

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

#16

Post by wildzzz »

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…

Kicad allows you to keep a library of projects containing layouts and schematics of small circuits that you may wish to reuse in other circuits by just simply importing them to the current design. You can then modify as needed.

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

#17

Post by napowderly »

quailfarmer wrote: post #13
topspin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text puts the problem squarely into the sights of generative models.

Maybe one day, but I’ve asked the various models basic EE interview questions, and it’s painfully obvious that while it can make a paragraph that has the right words, it’s incapable of reasoning spatially, or describing complex connections. My job is secure (for this year).

I have noticed a huge improvement in ChatGPTs coding abilities having an interpreter to check its work. I expect we will be able to bring a similar feedback loop to hardware once we can integrate things like simulation and equations. Also having modules that are tricky to configure incorrectly.

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

#18

Post by mawildoer »

wildzzz wrote: post #14

Why ato over existing hardware description languages or things like SPICE (and it's many derivatives)?

Great question! Current HDLs tend to primarily be focussed on digital circuit design, while at the PCBA level, there's a lot more focus on the "fuzziness" of the physical world (eg. tolerances).

We also noticed that most EEs we've worked with were a bit put off by the syntax and preferred something a bit more terse, but more intuitive and easier to read.

There perhaps an analog here in software - where we started with assembly (~ SPICE), moved up through things like C and now languages like Python and JavaScript are prolific and accessible.

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

#19

Post by napowderly »

wildzzz wrote: post #16
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…

Kicad allows you to keep a library of projects containing layouts and schematics of small circuits that you may wish to reuse in other circuits by just simply importing them to the current design. You can then modify as needed.

Indeed, Altium has similar features also. I think what has been missing is an effective way to collaborate on hardware projects as a community and be able to share them like you would packages on pypi or npm.

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

#20

Post by dartos »

napowderly wrote: post #17
quailfarmer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe one day, but I’ve asked the various models basic EE interview questions, and it’s painfully obvious that while it can make a paragraph that has the right words, it’s incapable of reasoning spatially, or describing complex connections. My job is secure (for this year).

I have noticed a huge improvement in ChatGPTs coding abilities having an interpreter to check its work. I expect we will be able to bring a similar feedback loop to hardware once we can integrate things like simulation and equations. Also having modules that are tricky to configure incorrectly.

I’ve noticed the opposite with chatgpt.

To be fair, idk how much elixir code is in the training set.

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