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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

#231

Post by crote »

Hasz wrote: post #149

For context, I am very familiar with KiCAD and somewhat familiar with Eagle. I think KiCAD gets a lot of things right. Some of the broken things: parts management (There is no central repo, a la LVFS, where I can get a part/pinout/3d model to easily import) export process (feels kludgey, although some manufactures take the native KiCAD files) multiple users, same project -- it's hard to put artifacts into git and mer…

> export process (feels kludgey, although some manufactures take the native KiCAD files)

I fear a lot of this is due to manufacturers. There are quite a few variables in the file definition, and every manufacturer requires them to be set slightly different.

Having pre-baked per-manufacturer templates in a dropdown box would already be quite the improvement, though.

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

#232

Post by robomartin »

Timot05 wrote: post #193
robomartin wrote: post #188

@Timot05 I wish you the best. Among other things, you are reinventing Verilog and other attempts. Yet, of course, evolution does not happen without people who are willing to devote their valuable time and effort to consider new ideas. My personal perspective, after having designed hundreds of PCB's, is that there's a reason for which symbol-based data entry has survived decades of computer-based circuit design evolut…

Thanks for sharing this blog post! Super cool to see how things were done early in the industry! Counterintuitively, I do agree with your points. We didn't end up designing the ato language because we actively wanted to end up there but rather because we tried everything else before and none of the solutions we tried worked out. The problem we wanted to solve was: "how does git look like in hardware?". Another way to…

I should probably add this:

One of the most useful things when developing anything at all is push-back or criticism. That's where you find value, insight, ideas and learning. I always value counterpoint far more than anyone who keeps telling me how great I am and that all is well.

Very recent example: I enlisted ten people a few weeks ago to critique a presentation I had to give at a conference in Zurich. One person, when I sent her the first draft, told me it was fantastic and that it sounded great. I never sent her version 2. Others pounded me hard with critique from every angle. They got every version until they had nothing negative to say. The last person stuck with me until the very last draft, she critiqued it until we both agreed it was time to let it go and focus on delivering what I had.

I say this to highlight that what I've been telling you is 100% in the spirit of constructive criticism. People telling you this is great is fantastic, but that never helps you make a better product or understand if you are on the right path. Keep going. Do what you believe is right. You don't have to accept or act on any criticism or push-back, listen to it, take it in and then do what you think is right given your objectives.

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

#233

Post by crote »

robomartin wrote: post #188

@Timot05 I wish you the best. Among other things, you are reinventing Verilog and other attempts. Yet, of course, evolution does not happen without people who are willing to devote their valuable time and effort to consider new ideas. My personal perspective, after having designed hundreds of PCB's, is that there's a reason for which symbol-based data entry has survived decades of computer-based circuit design evolut…

Yeah, I have to agree. It's a neat idea and I can see it having some applications, but I don't really see myself using this for anything serious.

I think OpenSCAD neatly demonstrates the issue with 3D modeling: when you come from a tool like Blender it might look amazing that you can now trivially change dimensions mid-design, but what you're really looking for is the parametric modeling you get from something like Solidworks.

Schematics-as-code doesn't solve a problem I am having. What I want, is for an easy way to import "snippets" in KiCad: I want a library where I can select an MCU, and it'll automatically add all its auxiliary parts too and let me choose from a few pre-made standard routing options. Maybe even make it parametric so it becomes a nice little wizard where if I'm adding an LDO I can enter a voltage and it'll calculate the adjustment resistors for me.

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

#234

Post by vrinsd »

robomartin wrote: post #200
Timot05 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this blog post! Super cool to see how things were done early in the industry! Counterintuitively, I do agree with your points. We didn't end up designing the ato language because we actively wanted to end up there but rather because we tried everything else before and none of the solutions we tried worked out. The problem we wanted to solve was: "how does git look like in hardware?". Another way to…

Random thoughts. I have a feeling that very few hardware projects have a bunch of people working on the same schematic. I have personally never experienced that in the context of a team project. What might happens is that each engineer works on a board and the interface between boards is defined by the team. I have done systems with 15 to 20 PCB's interconnected through custom backplanes this way. Modern EDA tools ha…

I agree with every comment robomartin has posted on this thread.

I'll add: I HAVE worked on schematic designs with 10-20 people working on an overall schematic design at the same time. Usually one or more engineers own some sub-section of the design ; i.e. for a mobile device, one or a few people own the "power" part of the schematic, the camera team owns the camera portion(s) of the schematic, etc.

Mentor (DxDesigner / Design Capture) and Cadence (Concept) support this flow, but with the oddly more popular but OrCad this can be a nightmare.

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

#235

Post by crote »

napowderly wrote: post #190
robomartin wrote: post #188

@Timot05 I wish you the best. Among other things, you are reinventing Verilog and other attempts. Yet, of course, evolution does not happen without people who are willing to devote their valuable time and effort to consider new ideas. My personal perspective, after having designed hundreds of PCB's, is that there's a reason for which symbol-based data entry has survived decades of computer-based circuit design evolut…

I am curious to hear that you dont see any value in bringing software workflow to hardware. I found in previous jobs we spent a huge fraction of our time dealing with things like release, version management and reviews. Thanks for your thoughts!

The value is mostly in the software workflow, not in the software tooling.

Store your KiCad files in Git. Make a script which automatically adds a revision tag to the PCB. Create a CI pipeline for Gerber generation. Export PNGs so you can do visual diffs.

If you're collaborating on some project which consists of artwork made in Photoshop you aren't looking for a text-based drawing program either - you are looking for a better way to do diffs.

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

#236

Post by stephen_g »

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…

As an electronic design engineer, it just feels to me like these kind of things aren't really huge problems day-to-day...

In terms of decoupling designs etc., the reason nobody has come up with a better solution is firstly that it doesn't actually take up enough time in the scheme of things to bother, and secondly that you often have to deviate. For variable regulators for example, the output capacitor (and inductor if it's not included in the device) are chosen based on output voltage, the switching frequency you choose, and sometimes other variables. You often want to deviate from the recommended circuit in the application notes for various reasons.

I'd think of a circuit board production as more like putting together a magazine than working on a software codebase, where you'd have a bunch of people working on overlapping parts of the code.

I mean even for a lot of boards we do (even quite complex ones) we'll just have one design engineer and one layout engineer, but for things where multiple people work on the schematic we just have people work on their own sheets and then somebody brings them together into the final design - kind of like where you might have an overall designer/editor that pulls a magazine together but individual people having put together individual articles. But it's pretty common that it would still be mostly laid out by a single engineer unless you're doing something extremely complex...

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

#237

Post by thrwwycbr »

> Could you imagine the pain of building an entire software product using only assembly code?

Speaking of it, THIS would be a killer product.

A program gets compiled down to x86/x64 assembly, and you take that LL file and generate an FPGA from it.

Of course there's a lot of limitations in regards to OS APIs, but those could be represented with an SDK (e.g. a network socket API that is compatible with linux's headers and leads to a NIC being controlled with a firmware replacement).

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

#238

Post by mawildoer »

bboygravity wrote: post #215
napowderly wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excited to hear it! Our language already captures tolerances and the solver we are building does proper tolerances stackups. You specify the desired output with a tolerance, eg my_regulator.power_out.voltage = 4.75V to 5.25V and we will solve the stack up to get you there. Hang tight, its coming soon!

Will it take into account temperature ranges and other parameters as well?

If we can build the equation solver our hearts are set on, you should be able to account for as many factors as your design requires - albeit with some performance limitations at some point. That is, assuming temperature can be factored into equations in the same manner as any other parameter or attribute

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

#239

Post by Timot05 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #213

Did you know that the KiCad file format for schematics and PCB layouts is text? And it kind of reads like source code? You can even check it into Git. What stops electronics from becoming like programming is the routing. It's NP hard and even the big car companies haven't solved it yet, let alone any tool accessible to hobbyists and startups. So you spend an hour designing the schematics, a few minutes placing the co…

Autorouting would for sure be a valuable tool to add to EEs toolchains. The reason we focused on the language first is because it is critical to provide high quality information to autorouter for them to do a good job. And achieving that with a schematic is tough, as it only captures part of the information required to doing a good job laying out the circuit. A bunch of information is currently implicit.

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

#240

Post by mawildoer »

crote wrote: post #233
robomartin wrote: post #188

@Timot05 I wish you the best. Among other things, you are reinventing Verilog and other attempts. Yet, of course, evolution does not happen without people who are willing to devote their valuable time and effort to consider new ideas. My personal perspective, after having designed hundreds of PCB's, is that there's a reason for which symbol-based data entry has survived decades of computer-based circuit design evolut…

Yeah, I have to agree. It's a neat idea and I can see it having some applications, but I don't really see myself using this for anything serious. I think OpenSCAD neatly demonstrates the issue with 3D modeling: when you come from a tool like Blender it might look amazing that you can now trivially change dimensions mid-design, but what you're really looking for is the parametric modeling you get from something like S…

You're right about "code" not being the right solution for everything. In the case of the layout we have indeed already already implemented an MVP of the "snippets" approach you described: https://atopile.io/blog/2024/02/02/-layout-reuse-keeps-getti...

A big part of the code is that creating a wizard for each issue it a tall order to develop, but through expressive and composable language we should be able to articulate the parameters for the configuration just as as clearly and generically solve that class of problems.

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