Why python? Why sink development effort into an obsolete and deeply flawed language?
Flawed? Sure, although every language has its flaws, some more than others. Deeply flawed? Not really. Obsolete? Lol, what. It's top 3 most popular languages.
Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
261–270 of 300 posts
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#262Really cool project, now available in the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/atopile
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#263Did 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…
Not just routing, but from a cursory reading of atopile I can't see how they've even addressed floorplanning?
The physical positioning of big components or IO is usually an important requirement that needs to be frozen early on, so that mechanical design on casework can proceed in parallel.
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. If JLCPcb made a simple online editor that sourced from available parts and integrated directly with their store they'd be running out of banks to put their money into.
> Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. I dunno. I've used others, and KiCad was no harder to start with than the others (Horizon, LibrePCB, Lepton/gEDA, some others I forgot). I asked for recommendations a week ago on HN for EDA products, and tried them all. You know which one I eventually settled on? The one with the most components (symbols + footprints). Turns out, features are nice (rules c…
This. By FAR the most annoying thing of creating a simple PCB is dealing with symbols and footprints. Why the hell is this is not a solved problem.
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#265It seems to me that this approach could make PCB design more approachable to blind people, as it's based on text rather than a visual UI. There are already blind electrical engineers and makers [1], but I don't know how they design PCBs.
[1]: https://nfb.org/sites/default/files/images/nfb/publications/...
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#266Nice project! Coming from computer science, I've been dabbling with electronics a bit. My path so far has been (sorry if I'm pointing the obvious):
0. computer science
1. arduino programming + very basic circuits
2. adding a few chips and talking to them through I2C/SPI: still in digital circuits territory, sending 1s and 0s
3. designing my frist PCBs with kiCAD: a huge learning step, and things start to get a bit messy (component tolerance, transmission delays ...)
4. looking at analog circuitry / alternative current / signal processing : a HUGE uncharted territory, full of promises and headaches.
This trajectory is probably quite common, and I'm sure atopile has a role to play there, when you start growing out of arduino. Making things a bit smoother, searchable, reusable, being able to learn from other people's design - what a wonderful tool it could be!
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. I dunno. I've used others, and KiCad was no harder to start with than the others (Horizon, LibrePCB, Lepton/gEDA, some others I forgot). I asked for recommendations a week ago on HN for EDA products, and tried them all. You know which one I eventually settled on? The one with the most components (symbols + footprints). Turns out, features are nice (rules c…
This. By FAR the most annoying thing of creating a simple PCB is dealing with symbols and footprints. Why the hell is this is not a solved problem.
Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin.
On top of that semiconductor vendors don't want to hire people to draw symbols in every possible cad solution.
So you instead have them release symbols in some preferred tool, maybe they also outsource to third party services like UltraLibrarian. There problem with the third party services is they do the laziest conversions possible between format using scripting and often do a horrible job.
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#268I love the project. what's your thoughts on this syntax?
class Blinky
microcontroller @mc(RP2040Kit)
led-indicator @led.blue
.input(&.microcontroller.gpio13)
.gnd(&.microcontroller.power.gnd)
.resistor.value(100, 10%)
voltage-regulator @regulator(Reg3V3)
.power-out(&.microcontroller.power)
usb-c-connector @usbc
.power(&.voltage-regulator.power-in)Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#269Very 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…
> 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. Not really. KiCad is open-source and a very capable EDA suite, for example. The problem is that it's a really hard problem for which no one-size-fits-all solution exists. There's basically an infinite number of properties which are important when designing electronics, many of which will have to be nud…
> The problem is that it's a really hard problem for which no one-size-fits-all solution exists.
Not really, IME.
Let's say I want a SMPS. Something basic, say 12-24v in 3.3v out at 1A. I can buy a module and solder it onto my PCB, or copy a reference design out of a PDF, or vendors like TI have tools like webbench to help me generate a custom design.
The vendor wants to hand me a proven design and have me buy their chips. I want to be handed a proven design and know my project's going to work right first time. But no, the likes of Altium have got to have their vendor lock-in by making copy-and-paste absolutely as difficult as possible.
There's no great skill or inventiveness in me drawing out the world's billionth SMPS design. I'm not "solving a hard problem" - it's drudgery.
> and there's a pretty decent chance these days they'll be openly available for the part you are using. But they always contain mistakes,
So you'd agree, then, that when a human copies from a PDF manually there's a substantial chance of them introducing errors?
Are you and I not equally vulnerable to making such mistakes? Frankly I find it absurdly wasteful that the industry has transistors in the same package but with different pinouts and the 'solution' to keeping this stuff in order is... senior engineers checking junior engineers' work against PDFs manually.
Re: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. By FAR the most annoying thing of creating a simple PCB is dealing with symbols and footprints. Why the hell is this is not a solved problem.
Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin. On top of that semiconductor vendors don't want to hire people to draw symbols in every possible cad solution. So you instead have them release symbols in some preferred tool, maybe they also outsource to third party services like UltraLibrarian. There problem with the third party services is th…
> Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin.
This doesn't really explain why creators of new CAD programs (Horizon and LibrePCB are new) invent new data formats.
We've seen time and time again, in every digital domain ever invented, that the most important thing is the dataset.
It doesn't really matter how nice the library manager is if what it manages has limited availability - and no, asking for a community to pitch in and help with the duplicated work is not a solution.
The solution is to pick the largest library and use its format.