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Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

copperhead.sh

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Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#91

Post by murderfs »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #64
monocasa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, then how are today's pcb layout techs solving these Np-hard problems in your mind, armed only with Altium?

Only decades of standards compliance, workmanship training, and experience. Human beings are very good at spotting patterns in noisy jungles, and making rational design tradeoffs. Auto-routers have been around far longer than even smartphones. Somewhat functional in the trivial problem domains, and always useless where design choices mattered. Best of luck solving a named problem. =3

> Somewhat functional in the trivial problem domains, and always useless where design choices mattered.

This is laughable when you consider that semiconductor design is the least "trivial" problem domain, and it happens entirely in RTL. There's basically zero human intervention when it comes to layout: even floorplanning is being automated nowadays.

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#92

Post by seveibar »

Many of the new agentic electronic design tools are KiCad-based, which is fine, but for people creating new EDA tools I'd encourage them to take a look at tscircuit (open-source, MIT). KiCad wasn't built for AI-gen with things like automatic routing/placement, supplier footprint orientation checking, connector orientation checking and other features that will be required as more people expect extensive validation for AI-generated designs. KiCad could add these things, but they've got decades of baggage and many Altium features to pull in. I'm worried that we're all getting bound by KiCad s-exprs

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#94

Post by edg5000 »

danielmorozoff wrote: post #7

Has anyone had experience with Copperhead vs Astra and kicad? Looking for a similar tool soon

I recommend having the LLM write Skidl, which generates a netlist, which you import in the PCB editor, which the LLM then reviews. Routing itself I think would require code-driven routing (expressing board via layout constraints, kinda like UI constraints/CSS) which does not exist yet.

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#95

Post by mlaux »

While this new competency of LLMs in EDA is objectively neat, I can't help but feel a little sad about the way this is going. Electronics projects are my refuge from the new hyper-speed low-quality software world. I want to "just not use it" and continue to enjoy electronics, but if I ever want to turn one of my ideas into a product, I'll be up against people who are building extremely quickly and to a lower quality standard. Yes, potential users of a cool new gadget care about having their problems solved above all else, but I can tell this is going to turn into another field we're all here saying "what happened to craft?" about, and idk, I just don't like it. And this is coming from someone who enjoys (turn by turn) LLM-boosted programming.

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#97

Post by rrr_oh_man »

dhon_ wrote: post #86

Is copperhead related to this Copperbrain project? https://github.com/deadbringer17/Copperbrain They have similar names, seem to solve similar problems and both have first commit within a few days in July. One is Python and the other Typescript though and they don't seem to be forks.

ChatGPT based naming

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#98

Post by tomhow »

m132 wrote: post #88
tomhow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post shallow dismissals or focus on trivialities. Let's focus on the substance of the project. It's a good sign that an early stage project hasn't devoted a lot of time or cost into their logo.

I'm sorry, but going on that website made me feel like I was being greeted by an AI support technician or recruiter. I understand—these days, there are more reasons to vibe a landing page than not. To many, however, this page is going to be their first encounter with the project. While it sure is shallow to judge a book solely by its cover, in this case, the cover just blatantly screams "we haven't even tried"... Can…

We just need you to observe the guidelines, no matter the topic or no matter how much it seems justifiable to overlook them in a particular case. They've been largely constant for nearly 20 years, and HN only continues to be a place where people want to discuss important topics because we have guidelines and uphold them daily. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#99

Post by kanwisher »

We are working on a similar product http://fabplane.com

Goal is to make it easy for users to remix circuits, like say you want to make a mod for a retro video game system, you can fork off of an existing mod and just change it, and we guide you through getting it printed at pcbway or jlcpcb.

Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

#100

Post by anovikov »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #55
mikeayles wrote: post #5

The space is definitely heating up. Flux.ai being the incumbent Silixon based out of the UK have been showing demos Quilter and DeepPCB for layout The recent OpenAI demo... I went the other way and pre-designed sub circuits with a set of rules that allows simple merge assembly, unfortunately I didn't have the time or budget to continue with it, but I took the constrained approach as with hardware, things can't be 99%…

My experience with hardware engineers, at least IRL, is very different. They love to talk about their work. However, I used to be an EE so that probably helps. As for Reddit, there's a lot of "bury head in sand and problem will go away" behavior when it comes to AI. People are understandably worried about their jobs, but they're certainly not doing themselves any favors by downplaying AI or looking for "tech niches w…

Thing is, what can they realistically do? Any work that does not involve a social component is on the way out. All work that remains will be more like "service" than like "work" the way we see it today ("service" as in "civil service", not as in "held in service or labor", i hope).
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