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A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

withdiode.com

261–270 of 270 posts

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#261

Since the title refers to how it looks, this thing looks more like a toy than a tool. Also, as far as it's up to me, I'll never use an app that requires me to “sign in”. I prefer to own the apps I use and retain full control over my data.

You can literally edit and simulate the project while anonymous without any limitations.

And then when you decide to sign up/sign in it will restore the changes you made while you were signed out and you can pick up where you left off.

Is that still not enough?

Also, it's completely free and we have no plans to do anything with your data.

For real, i have no clue how to make it any easier/more enticing for you...

This has been 3 months of painstaking work and you can't even be bothered to try it for free?

Pretty insulting honestly and pretty hard to be an app developer these days as this mentality is becoming quite pervasive.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#262
post #253
post #238

“Doesn’t look like it was made in 2003.” Sometimes in tech we don’t do a good job of recognizing that a problem is essentially “solved” and further “innovation” isn’t helping. The reason why stuff looked like “it was made in 2003” was because that essentially solved the problem. All the extra iterations on top of that arguably didn’t help. A lot could be said of many forms of web design too. The basic designs of the…

This is a bad take - most UIs from that era are objectively worse, and most of the good ones have been carried forwards and incorporated into newer versions. With old software, you have a lot of experimental ideas that make it into prod. Want properties on this item? Sorry, right click rotates the component. Click the component and press P instead. Today, at least in the professional software world, UIs are better th…

I don't know, i still prefer Win XP/7 UI over Win 10/11

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#263
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad take - most UIs from that era are objectively worse, and most of the good ones have been carried forwards and incorporated into newer versions. With old software, you have a lot of experimental ideas that make it into prod. Want properties on this item? Sorry, right click rotates the component. Click the component and press P instead. Today, at least in the professional software world, UIs are better th…

I don't know, i still prefer Win XP/7 UI over Win 10/11

xp/7 is no simple slash and is filled with the screams and tantrums of vista and Windows 2000 curmudgeons.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#266

Schematics are for understanding what a circuit does. Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits. Veroboard is for prototyping larger medium-speed circuits. Gerbers & a PCB are for production and for prototyping large or high-speed circuits. If the tool could automatically make a 3D breadboard view from a schematic, it'd be pretty neat for beginners. If the tool warned you when the normal parasitic capa…

Schematics HAVE TO define which components are in the circuit and how they are connected (unless you really want to write net lists).

Schematics SHOULD help readers to understand what a circuit does.

Especially in, let's say, "prosumer" boards (like boards designed by small companies for hobbyists) I keep seeing schematics that are designed to make it easy for the dev to get them done and NOT to communicate the circuit theory.

It's exactly like writing code without any formatting or comments. As far as I'm concerned connecting components by net name is as bad or worse than a GOTO.

\rant

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#267

Yes, it simulates blowing stuff up. Run this and wait: https://www.withdiode.com/projects/03af8e77-ff1b-4304-b1dd-d...

Only thing I miss now is that burnt LED smell xD

Worth the day it will take off your life expectancy!

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#268

There's a similar product at https://wokwi.com/ (with an open source core) It's actually really useful, fast, educational. Highly recommended. I also wish someone would revitalize falstad circuit sim ( http://falstad.com/circuit/ ), which is still I think the best tool for experimentation with analog electronics. Just a little bit better interface and user friendliness and it would be amazing! A somewhat more robust…

I did the port of Paul's sim so that it runs natively in the browser instead of needing a Java plug-in (remember them) and made various other contributions. I haven't contributed for a couple of years, but Paul still actively maintains it. Do you have specific ideas on what would be changed to "revitalize" it? I agree the UI is kind of basic (it could do with a pallet of common components), but I still like the produ…

Well, first, thanks so much for your work it's really one of the most useful tools on the internet imo. I'm not super qualified to critique it, specially the interface. (but I think it works well as is!)

I had a look back at it and see many great new features.

(1) I think it's awesome that you can program javascript inputs (and there's AVR8js). But it's not really user friendly: maybe there could be some editor window or something you could program js in with syntax highlighting

I think that's what would be most significant contribution for me, because there are quite a few prototypes where you want to mix analog/digital and that's currently difficult.

(2) If you want to get really fancy, look at editor.p5.js interface (although in terms of self-documentation[1], I think circuitjs is better!). The cloud save functionality could be really useful (although I'd understand if you find it out of scope).

(3) Maybe the time step could adjust automatically as an option? (Something like: auto step -- simulate at half speed and check the difference between the two simulations; if significant, improve accuracy until it reaches maximum; I'm sure there could be better approaches though like trying to find maximum resonance frequencies)

(4) An easy way to run it offline? I think since it's already a web app and it's very light, an electron app distribution would be nice (although HN notoriously cringes at electron :P ).

[1] I define self-documentation as the ability to find functionality and documentation within a user interface. That's easier done with GUIs where commands and references should be a few clicks away, though it can also be done in text interfaces with help commands and such.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#269
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing multi chip stuff with 16MHz Atmels with no issues just using a de-coupleing cap on the Vins. Did it not used to be that easy?

You say multi chip, but what are the signals going between chips? Imagine all the peripherals baked into your uc were separate DIPs, and you had to worry about high speed signals going everywhere. And yeah, all the parts were less robust and hadn’t evolved to be tolerant of less than perfect conditions.

You're right, the chips are not speaking 16MHz to each other. I've always revered the computing era where the electrical engineering actually mattered. Cheers.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#270
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently came across a reference manual for an SoC that came in at over 24,000 pages - a new personal record. The tools for working with such large PDFs generally suck.

I'd be so happy with a 24,000 page PDF, cause then at least you know where too look, and you can the search tool. I programme Siemens hardware and the docs I need are spread out over many tens of PDFs (of 100-1500 pages). I haven't found a proper tool than can let me search and view all this documentation properly. Best I found is ripgrep with some PDF extension to search which document I need, and then use SumatraPD…

Use Recoll, a desktop full text search tool which uses Xapian as the backend.
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