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Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

blog.adafruit.com

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Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#41

Post by mapontosevenths »

karmicthreat wrote: post #18

Adafruit probably did a review of AI PCB tools. I've used Flux.ai before; it was a pretty bad experience. After about 50-100$ in tokens a couple of times, I couldn't get more than a couple of simple components on the schematic. And not in sensible positions. The product just grinds tokens for little return, in my opinion. I had far better luck wiring together KiCad MCP, SKIDL. There are some AI-driven autorouters out…

> I could only get about 80% of what I wanted together with my hacky workflow.

I literally did this yesterday with solid results using Codex CLI. I used xhigh thinking and gpt 5.5.

I had it use KiCad directly via cli rather than via MCP, and I did make Claude Opus review it's work after every round. I got what I think will be a working revision A in about 10 hours of tinkering spread over a few days.

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#43

Post by ptorrone »

altaccount2026 wrote: post #40
ptorrone wrote: post #30

hi everyone, phil and limor here, any questions for now, email press@adafruit.com limor and i are very much looking forward to telling our story.

[flagged]

new empty "altaccount2026" with only this post, hi.

please email press@adafruit.com , limor and i are looking forward to telling our story very soon - pt & limor

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#44

Post by ptorrone »

boncester wrote: post #39
ptorrone wrote: post #30

hi everyone, phil and limor here, any questions for now, email press@adafruit.com limor and i are very much looking forward to telling our story.

It might be being suggested in that statement, but to me that reads that there's a potential opportunity there for a delayed AMA on this? That if people were to email press@adafruit.com with a subject line (for example) of 'FLUX - AMA for later', these questions could be rounded up and the responses could then go onto a Adafruit blog page later, when and if applicable?

limor and phil here, we would 100% welcome it, looking forward to telling our story very soon - pt & limor

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#45

Post by zettabomb »

jdnrebd wrote: post #38
zettabomb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, but I'm not sure if you can say - has Adafruit ever published anything about Flux?

You should read the linked article

I have, and the article does not in any way address my question. You also seem to be a brand new user, so in case you're not aware, HN guidelines say to refrain from mentioning whether or not someone has read the link.

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#46

Post by altaccount2026 »

zettabomb wrote: post #35
ptorrone wrote: post #30

hi everyone, phil and limor here, any questions for now, email press@adafruit.com limor and i are very much looking forward to telling our story.

I'm curious, but I'm not sure if you can say - has Adafruit ever published anything about Flux?

[flagged]

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#47

Post by pjc50 »

karmicthreat wrote: post #18

Adafruit probably did a review of AI PCB tools. I've used Flux.ai before; it was a pretty bad experience. After about 50-100$ in tokens a couple of times, I couldn't get more than a couple of simple components on the schematic. And not in sensible positions. The product just grinds tokens for little return, in my opinion. I had far better luck wiring together KiCad MCP, SKIDL. There are some AI-driven autorouters out…

> There are some AI-driven autorouters out there now. Placement is probably the big issue that needs to be solved now.

Interesting that within an IC this is basically "solved", or at least properly automated with classical numeric techniques such as simulated annealing.

I would have thought there's a big opportunity in a mixed-technique approach, where you use AI to extract unstructured data from datasheets and then feed it into more deterministic tools.

I also note that it's very easy to waste more than $100 in electronics once you start actually manufacturing bad PCBs.

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#48

Post by ceejayoz »

ptorrone wrote: post #43
altaccount2026 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

new empty "altaccount2026" with only this post, hi. please email press@adafruit.com , limor and i are looking forward to telling our story very soon - pt & limor

They have a few more if you turn showdead on. All about y’all.

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#49

Post by ElFitz »

karmicthreat wrote: post #18

Adafruit probably did a review of AI PCB tools. I've used Flux.ai before; it was a pretty bad experience. After about 50-100$ in tokens a couple of times, I couldn't get more than a couple of simple components on the schematic. And not in sensible positions. The product just grinds tokens for little return, in my opinion. I had far better luck wiring together KiCad MCP, SKIDL. There are some AI-driven autorouters out…

> Placement is probably the big issue that needs to be solved now.

Would some sort of constraint-solving algorithm help with that? Something like (but not necessarily) Cassowary[0]? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what is meant by placement though; I don't have much domain knowledge in PCBs / electronics.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43362528

Re: Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai

#50

Post by pftburger »

Falimonda wrote: post #37

Had anyone tried AutoPCB ( https://autopcb.app/ ) instead? Seems especially useful when paired with an agentic coding tool!

Yep, and it’s terrible

Not only did it burn a 100$ failing but it did so in a very untransparent way.

I bought a 20 dollar plan but they snuck a 100$ billed usage into the billing agreements next thing I know the agent as used the quote going in circles and my card is billed.

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