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How/where are people getting their PCBs manufactured and assembled? Are cheap chinese services reliable? How do you protect your IP when using manufacturing services?
Never seen my IP show up anywhere but it's generally not very interesting to begin with :P
Kicad is an amazing tool. Not easy to get into, kind of like vim in that regard, but when mastered, it's really powerful. With that in place, I wish it had: . Something to import LTSpice files directly into its schematics tool (or even better, go back and forth) . A rough but well integrated auto-router . A better parts library management system (the current one is really bad). But even without those, designing elect…
Kicad is an amazing tool. Not easy to get into, kind of like vim in that regard, but when mastered, it's really powerful. With that in place, I wish it had: . Something to import LTSpice files directly into its schematics tool (or even better, go back and forth) . A rough but well integrated auto-router . A better parts library management system (the current one is really bad). But even without those, designing elect…
You can simulate using SPICE in KiCad now (ngspice). KiCad already has an auto-router? But yeah, parts management is a mess...
How/where are people getting their PCBs manufactured and assembled? Are cheap chinese services reliable? How do you protect your IP when using manufacturing services?
How/where are people getting their PCBs manufactured and assembled? Are cheap chinese services reliable? How do you protect your IP when using manufacturing services?
2. Protecting your IP with your PCB design isn't something you can really do. Any PCB can be reverse engineered very easily. Besides, if you're asking this question on a random internet forum, I have to doubt you have any serious IP to worry about.
Kicad is an amazing tool. Not easy to get into, kind of like vim in that regard, but when mastered, it's really powerful. With that in place, I wish it had: . Something to import LTSpice files directly into its schematics tool (or even better, go back and forth) . A rough but well integrated auto-router . A better parts library management system (the current one is really bad). But even without those, designing elect…
If you're depending on an auto-router, you're doing it wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start with an electrical and computer engineering course. Some eda tools are literally fancy vector graphics engines. Some are em simulators wrapped up. Others are circuit modeing tools. It's not really like programming. The tools are deeply integrated into the physics of the system.
> It's not really like programming. The tools are deeply integrated into the physics of the system. What specifically makes electronics different from modeling other systems with software? DSP immediately comes to mind as something that is explicitly tied to Maxwell but there is really good software out there for describing, modeling, and creating signal processing components similar to how you'd write software. An e…
The answer is yes, but of course not exclusively. There was an English talk at ccc a while ago by an AMD engineer with lots of details on the whole process.
How/where are people getting their PCBs manufactured and assembled? Are cheap chinese services reliable? How do you protect your IP when using manufacturing services?
The first thought you should be having is what are you actually protecting? Is the value of your product in the PCB? Keep in mind that even moderately complex PCBs can be reverse engineered relatively easily.
If you are putting your secret sauce in the PCB, you’ve already lost. Doesn’t matter if your board is one later or twenty.
How/where are people getting their PCBs manufactured and assembled? Are cheap chinese services reliable? How do you protect your IP when using manufacturing services?
Your secret IP had better not be your circuit board. That’s a losing proposition.
Kicad is an amazing tool. Not easy to get into, kind of like vim in that regard, but when mastered, it's really powerful. With that in place, I wish it had: . Something to import LTSpice files directly into its schematics tool (or even better, go back and forth) . A rough but well integrated auto-router . A better parts library management system (the current one is really bad). But even without those, designing elect…
I've had very good luck with this build of FreeRouting alongside KiCad https://freerouting.mihosoft.eu
I used it to route a board, and it was kind of touchy, but did the job.