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Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

withdiode.com

101–107 of 107 posts

Re: Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

#101
post #69

Damn the 3D graphics look great This would be useful for opensource hardware projects (aimed at beginners) to literally see how things are wired together. I'm still not at the schematic phase myself. But I use MS Paint wiring diagrams. OMG the wires flex, damn

Falstad CircuitJS[0] is excellent and far better than the mess of a breadboard IMHO. It also allows easily instrumenting the circuits at multiple points so you can get a sense of the changes in ‘realtime’ without having to get (and learn to use) an oscilloscope (yet).

0: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html

Re: Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

#103
post #11

I appreciated that smoke comes out of the battery if you short it :) Edit: I am ex EE. I will note that it's horrible using this view. It is marginally more horrible than using breadboards in reality. Schematics exist because reality tends to suck or have inconsistencies. For example TO-99 packages come in different pin orders, so 2N3904 has the opposite order to a BC547. Also breadboards tend not to have full length…

I shorted it and it crashed the page. I feel like that was appropriate. :D

Re: Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

#104
post #101
post #69

Damn the 3D graphics look great This would be useful for opensource hardware projects (aimed at beginners) to literally see how things are wired together. I'm still not at the schematic phase myself. But I use MS Paint wiring diagrams. OMG the wires flex, damn

Falstad CircuitJS[0] is excellent and far better than the mess of a breadboard IMHO. It also allows easily instrumenting the circuits at multiple points so you can get a sense of the changes in ‘realtime’ without having to get (and learn to use) an oscilloscope (yet). 0: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html

I was referring to the visual aspect eg. this is literally a 3D capacitor vs. -|(- which may be harder for casual electronic hobbyists.

Less for theory more visually "this wire goes here"

Re: Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can catch it with a footprint review. List all your new footprints or old footprints assigned to new parts, and have someone else check them against the datasheets. Or if you ever have the good fortune to work with a very good layout designer, they will check things like that for you just to catch you out.

I've seen such things pass through multiple layers of review. It's the kind of thing everyone knows to look for but takes a lot of effort to catch.

"Can" does not mean "always will without fail". On the flip side, you will never catch things in review if you don't review.

Having a specific review for new parts helps to keep footprint errors from "passing through". I've never seen a general layout review catch a footprint error: if you're used to using internal library parts, no one thinks to check them.

Re: Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

#106
post #94
post #42

Are there similar solutions without 3d view? I want to get a simulator that can show me what is going in the circuit, ideally slowed down a lot. For example I was making a dongle with resistor and capacitor which was delivering a pulse-short (i.e. removing power for a short period of time instead of delivering an impulse) and while I was able to confirm overall idea with some online simulator, dialing in capacitance…

Ltspice. Ng-spice

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Re: Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware

#107
post #104
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falstad CircuitJS[0] is excellent and far better than the mess of a breadboard IMHO. It also allows easily instrumenting the circuits at multiple points so you can get a sense of the changes in ‘realtime’ without having to get (and learn to use) an oscilloscope (yet). 0: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html

I was referring to the visual aspect eg. this is literally a 3D capacitor vs. -|(- which may be harder for casual electronic hobbyists. Less for theory more visually "this wire goes here"

Breadboards, whilst initially appearing to be nice and accessible, tend to be a false economy when it comes to building a good intuition around a lot of fundamentals. This is because it’s a lot easier to reason about the basics with ‘perfect’ circuit and component behaviour than the messiness of reality. For example in a ‘perfect’ circuit wires can have no resistance or inductance (unless you want them to), in reality it’s unavoidable that they do, by how much will vary for reasons that may not be obvious to a beginner. I’m not saying breadboards are universally bad, they have a place but IMHO learning fundamentals directly through them ain’t it. I spent a long time stubbornly trying to learn things breadboard-first and in hindsight it was horrendously confusing versus drawing schematics, doing the math, and then playing in something like Circuit JS. It was only then that really important things started to really become second nature.

There’s also the other thing of being able to read documentation. If one wants to use some module in one’s project, the datasheet and application notes aren’t going to have breadboard-centric illustrations, they’re going to have schematics (or at least abstracted ones). I presume you come from a programming background, and so would know the importance of being able to read documentation, and knowing that if you can’t do that you’re pretty much dead in the water.

The hard part of learning about electronics is not identifying the components but getting a good understanding of what is happening in the circuit. For that, it’s better to have a learning tool which displays voltage and current at every part of the circuit all the time. Rather than something which prioritises looking like what you’d have on your desk as a constraint for its method of visual representation.

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