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Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

atopile.io

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Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#21

Post by sleepytimetea »

yodon wrote: post #3

If the important thing is "with code" then show me the code. I gave up hunting through your website because I never managed to find an example of what the code for a real circuit looks like. That should be front and center on the first page.

I agree - we need a large example not the toy examples of NeoPixels chained together. Also, in the Github module library, I found only ESP32-C3 modules but the hobbyists use ESP8266 and ESP32 and ESP12-E as well as STM dev modules...I suppose its one of those things where contributors will help populate the library but I don't see instructions on how to build all the artifacts I see in the library - there are atleast 12 artifacts for each module...

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#22

Post by napowderly »

yodon wrote: post #3

If the important thing is "with code" then show me the code. I gave up hunting through your website because I never managed to find an example of what the code for a real circuit looks like. That should be front and center on the first page.

Fair enough! We definitely need a better landing page, we are just coming out of a long period of building, will all be getting some much needed polish soon!

Here is one of our more recent demo projects you can check out that shows how a larger project is structured: https://github.com/atopile/nonos/blob/main/elec/src/nonos.at...

And an example of modeling a component: https://github.com/atopile/packages/tree/main/packages/archi...

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#23

Post by napowderly »

ted_dunning wrote: post #16
amelius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reaction to the first comment would be that for more flexibility you could write a Python script to generate the .ato netlist.

Sure. But that flexibility means that you lose a lot of common constraints that are actually desirable.

We think both are pretty important. For most people, the ato language should be sufficiently powerful, for module designers we have a python interface that allows for more complex designs.

For example the INA228 from TI has a funky addressing scheme that is not possible to describe in ato, so we create a hybrid module:

atopile for the main structure: https://github.com/atopile/packages/blob/multi/adafruit_heis...

compose in an 'addressor' python module: https://github.com/atopile/packages/blob/multi/adafruit_heis...

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#24

Post by napowderly »

IshKebab wrote: post #19

So, as noted by yodon you have to go a long way through the website to figure out what this actually is: https://atopile.io/atopile/essentials/1-the-ato-language So the idea is you basically do all of your connections (the netlist) in code. That actually seems like a reasonable idea to me, especially for digital electronics. However , I would say that schematic capture is only a small minority of the work of most cir…

Our vision is not schematic capture, but intent capture. Once you can capture intent it can trickle down to schematics, layout, BOM selection etc. The language is pretty simple at the moment and building out from the 'minimum useful product' which is basically replacing the schematic.

The schematic is not most of the work, but it is the place that most of the work is relying on as a source of truth. Everything from firmware header files, end of line testing, reliability tests to service manuals. Today as an engineer you end up in the middle of that. Once you have a complete description, much of the boiler plate work can be automated.

We have done quite alot on the components and routing section of the work as well, we can generate most components for you automatically without leaving the IDE and have a growing list of fully auto-selected components. Instead of going to digkey to find a 10kohm 1% 0402, you can just give those specs to our tool and it will automatically pick the most suitable one for you, considering things like price and stock (plus eventually any other filtering you might care about, including custom libraries). For layout we currently just to layout reuse blocks, which is actually a crazy time saver for how simple it is. https://packages.atopile.io/ currently has ~10s of parts, but we are growing it over the next few weeks to ~thousands, so most parts you want to use will have a reference design + layout you can install and use in your project, just like you would NPM/pypi.

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#25

Post by napowderly »

delfinom wrote: post #17
imtringued wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree if manufacturers bothered to provide machine readable data sheets [0]. If you have to read the data sheet and manually write your component definitions, then this won't be much faster than doing it with a GUI. [0] To be fair I'm not a professional electrical engineer, maybe there are expensive databases that I don't have access to. I personally always thought that EDA tools have a natural business oppor…

Most semiconductor vendors have now outsourced library creations (for free to end users) to services like UltraLibrarian where you pick what you want and download. The quality however is meh. Libraries are a very touchy subject. Most of the time, outsiders to the field just want "plug and play". Professionals in the field? Holy fucking hell can we get neurotic. In a large company you may have more than one person ded…

I think there is actually some really neat stuff to be built here. I think layout engineers would love to be able to write down their 'style guide' that is basically a set of parameters modifying the footprint. We would have a 'common' representation, basically a definition of the package itself that would be transformed to whatever you might like for the pad/silk shapes. Something very similar to having a linter in code that would enforce company best practices.

We already provide the 'plug and play' version which looks quite alot like LCSC data and is certainly good enough for playing around with. Id really like to put some effort into standardizing this in the mid-term, seems pretty crazy to me that there are way more footprints designs out there than actual packages.

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#26

Post by napowderly »

imtringued wrote: post #10
amelius wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still makes sense though. In many cases, especially in digital design, circuits look like islands of isolated components where the labels are actually defining the connections between them.

I would agree if manufacturers bothered to provide machine readable data sheets [0]. If you have to read the data sheet and manually write your component definitions, then this won't be much faster than doing it with a GUI. [0] To be fair I'm not a professional electrical engineer, maybe there are expensive databases that I don't have access to. I personally always thought that EDA tools have a natural business oppor…

I basically dont write ato code when designing modules any more, claude code + rules file + a few decent examples and an MCP for basic functions like building, finding parts and inspecting library components is able to do a pretty great job. As an example, claude one-shotted this MPU6050 design: https://github.com/atopile/packages/blob/multi/adafruit_heis...

Currently working on a pipeline to generate a whole bunch of these automatically, stick them on some big test boards and make sure they actually work. We will be selling razor blades, and will have the test data to show they work.

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#27

Post by igfarben »

napowderly wrote: post #24
IshKebab wrote: post #19

So, as noted by yodon you have to go a long way through the website to figure out what this actually is: https://atopile.io/atopile/essentials/1-the-ato-language So the idea is you basically do all of your connections (the netlist) in code. That actually seems like a reasonable idea to me, especially for digital electronics. However , I would say that schematic capture is only a small minority of the work of most cir…

Our vision is not schematic capture, but intent capture. Once you can capture intent it can trickle down to schematics, layout, BOM selection etc. The language is pretty simple at the moment and building out from the 'minimum useful product' which is basically replacing the schematic. The schematic is not most of the work, but it is the place that most of the work is relying on as a source of truth. Everything from f…

You're going to win and it's going to be easier than you ever imagined

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#28

Post by hypercube33 »

delfinom wrote: post #17
imtringued wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree if manufacturers bothered to provide machine readable data sheets [0]. If you have to read the data sheet and manually write your component definitions, then this won't be much faster than doing it with a GUI. [0] To be fair I'm not a professional electrical engineer, maybe there are expensive databases that I don't have access to. I personally always thought that EDA tools have a natural business oppor…

Most semiconductor vendors have now outsourced library creations (for free to end users) to services like UltraLibrarian where you pick what you want and download. The quality however is meh. Libraries are a very touchy subject. Most of the time, outsiders to the field just want "plug and play". Professionals in the field? Holy fucking hell can we get neurotic. In a large company you may have more than one person ded…

I understand as someone who has played factorio and then had an engineering friend join my game and rebuild everything so it's lined up and shorter belts

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#29

Post by IshKebab »

napowderly wrote: post #24
IshKebab wrote: post #19

So, as noted by yodon you have to go a long way through the website to figure out what this actually is: https://atopile.io/atopile/essentials/1-the-ato-language So the idea is you basically do all of your connections (the netlist) in code. That actually seems like a reasonable idea to me, especially for digital electronics. However , I would say that schematic capture is only a small minority of the work of most cir…

Our vision is not schematic capture, but intent capture. Once you can capture intent it can trickle down to schematics, layout, BOM selection etc. The language is pretty simple at the moment and building out from the 'minimum useful product' which is basically replacing the schematic. The schematic is not most of the work, but it is the place that most of the work is relying on as a source of truth. Everything from f…

Firmware is a good point!

I think relying on "we have a big set of components" is never going to work though. There are literally millions of components, often with unique footprints. You'll never cover even them all or even close to it. It needs to be easy to make your own.

Anyway good luck. PCB EDA could definitely do with some modernisation.

Re: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code

#30

Post by napowderly »

napowderly wrote: post #23
ted_dunning wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But that flexibility means that you lose a lot of common constraints that are actually desirable.

We think both are pretty important. For most people, the ato language should be sufficiently powerful, for module designers we have a python interface that allows for more complex designs. For example the INA228 from TI has a funky addressing scheme that is not possible to describe in ato, so we create a hybrid module: atopile for the main structure: https://github.com/atopile/packages/blob/multi/adafruit_heis... com…

Above links broken: https://github.com/atopile/packages/blob/main/packages/ti-in... https://github.com/atopile/packages/blob/main/packages/ti-in...
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