How reliable was the re-import step? Once you’d placed and routed things manually in KiCad, could you ask Claude for another change without it disturbing that work? Did you need to explicitly mark which parts should stay untouched?
Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
111–120 of 121 posts
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every trace on a PCB is a traveling salesman problem with ballooning complexity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem While physics informed models do exist, they are still going to burn a lot of compute to generate failure modes people didn't know were possible. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ
Yes, the optimal solution won't be achievable, it will burn lots of compute and we need better simulations so that less errors are made (and will be made). Still, if LLMs are capable of writing working code, art and solving math problems, they qre definitely capable of doing suboptimal routing (with some algorithmic aid)
>if LLMs are capable of
That is the leap in logic, as an LLM doesn't think/create/feel or understand. It simply copies billions of patterns, and finds the closest fit.
> writing working code,
You mean a compacted collage of stolen codified work from real people. It will require a continuous parasitic relationship of user data to remain coherent. Given the firms have already stolen everything, it is unlikely to improve much as weights are refined.
> art
Again, a statistical output of salient feature clusters mimicking a humans output is not a creative process. For example, a glass-blower only sees the glowing art-form in its true state before it is annealed into its final form. Or a painter undergoes a creative process to find meaning, and abandons the work when there is nothing left to add.
Emotional projection onto an algorithmic output is simply recognizing the millions of peoples aesthetic choices stolen, and compacted with some degree of lost granularity. It is peoples art forms, but no creative thought or intent behind the results.
> solving math problems,
LLM are very good at context search, but require persistent data streams to mine for weighting relevant vector proximity. Again, everything that could be stolen, has already been scraped.
Only user input data remains in a sea of slop, and the process is degenerative given most human chat-users appear to be losing 17% cognitive function. As people discover the intelligence campaign against users is not in their interest.. paying companies to rob you and your friends makes less sense.
Being a sentient turnip, I am probably unaware of such things. ymmv =3
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 .
Fair. I wish low quality submissions received similar treatment to low quality comments, or at least had their own category, separate from the main page.
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Look at jlcpcb or other Chinese assembly houses. If you stay within their component library it is dead easy, just upload your gerber and BOM, and you can have assembled boards within a week or so. Slightly more difficult if they have to order parts for your BOM, but still not really that hard.
if I needed something on the board that was outside the component library of the assembly house, can I ship it to them? or have them arrange for it somehow? How constrained is the component library?
Any PCB assembler can help you source outside parts or accept your parts.
Go look at the library, I can’t really tell you if it is constrained for your use case.
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#115Many 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…
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Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
What were the chicken's thoughts on the Jacobian conjecture?
Finding a consistent pattern by conflating most papers, resolving a similar isomorphic vector search proximity result from an entire field of research. LLM are very good at brute force context search spaces, and people see patterns in nonsense even when it is nebulous. Similar to the Newton's Apple story people are fond of telling each other. =3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Explain how this is different from what humans do.
We all just muddle through life, predicting the next token. That's it. That's all there is. And it's enough.
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 .
Fair. I wish low quality submissions received similar treatment to low quality comments, or at least had their own category, separate from the main page.
There will always be a range of views about whether an article is good or not; there's no universal definition of “low quality submission”. HN’s ethos is to surface content that “gratifies intellectual curiosity”. Often we only really know whether an article fits that description once we see the discussion thread. You're welcome to flag submissions you think are not fit for HN, or to email hn@ycombinator.com to point out why an article is unfit for the front page. And you can make a substantive comment critiquing the article.
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finding a consistent pattern by conflating most papers, resolving a similar isomorphic vector search proximity result from an entire field of research. LLM are very good at brute force context search spaces, and people see patterns in nonsense even when it is nebulous. Similar to the Newton's Apple story people are fond of telling each other. =3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Explain how this is different from what humans do. We all just muddle through life, predicting the next token. That's it. That's all there is. And it's enough.
>Explain how this is different from what humans do.
The same reason every human understands how Einstein brushed his teeth in the morning. Best regards =3
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the optimal solution won't be achievable, it will burn lots of compute and we need better simulations so that less errors are made (and will be made). Still, if LLMs are capable of writing working code, art and solving math problems, they qre definitely capable of doing suboptimal routing (with some algorithmic aid)
>if LLMs are capable of That is the leap in logic, as an LLM doesn't think/create/feel or understand. It simply copies billions of patterns, and finds the closest fit. > writing working code, You mean a compacted collage of stolen codified work from real people. It will require a continuous parasitic relationship of user data to remain coherent. Given the firms have already stolen everything, it is unlikely to improv…
> That is a leap in logic
It is not, it doesn't matter if a brain's neurons or a prediction algorithm managed to get the solution if it has done so in a (sort of) reliable way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test
Errors are made by both machines and humans, so that's not a differenting factor.
What is clear is that the human element will be more valued on art as time goes on.
Re: Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explain how this is different from what humans do. We all just muddle through life, predicting the next token. That's it. That's all there is. And it's enough.
>Explain how this is different from what humans do. The same reason every human understands how Einstein brushed his teeth in the morning. Best regards =3
That logic is so goofy, I don't even think the Greeks had a name for it.