11–20 of 32 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must have given up pretty quick."ato Language" in the left-hand navigator under "Essentials" is pretty obvious. https://atopile.io/atopile/essentials/1-the-ato-language
That's a language definition not an example of what a real circuit looks like in code.
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…
https://dl.espressif.com/dl/schematics/esp32_devkitc_v4-sch....
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.
https://github.com/atopile/cell-sim/ also quite interessting.
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.
Previously: Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39263854 - Feb 2024 (292 comments)
My reaction to the first comment would be that for more flexibility you could write a Python script to generate the .ato netlist.
But that flexibility means that you lose a lot of common constraints that are actually desirable.
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…
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 dedicated just to managing libraries and drawing them to your standards instead of letting the internet do it. And there's a whole list of reasons why one may do it vs. not do so. (Schematics are a form of design expression and as such there are many standards and thoughts on optimal forms of expression, including dependency on the particular sub-industry you are)
No different than software engineers having their favorite programming language, markup language, config file language, code style guidelines, deployment workflows, etc.
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.
How about this? https://packages.atopile.io/packages/atopile/ti-lv284x/relea...
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 circuit design. Probably 90% is creating components and layout/routing.
> If you want to layout or route PCBs you will need to install KiCAD.
I couldn't really figure out what the deal is with components. They have a website with a few packages on it (https://packages.atopile.io/) and they say:
> Check first-party packages for a list designed and used internally at atopile. Discussion planning to open this up publicly These are built, known to work and come with a functioning layout too.
Ah also I didn't realise this is actually a startup. Makes sense given how much effort seems to have gone into that website!