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

withdiode.com

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

#61

Post by malerba118 »

sixothree wrote: post #36
Kwpolska wrote: post #8

The competition might look ancient, but IMO, a 2D interface would be much more productive and easier to work with. This site is completely unusable for me in Firefox (it does work in Edge though).

Why is it even a web site? Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but this seems slow and unusable. But more importantly, I have a hard time bringing myself to trust anything that isn't saved locally. edit: Also I feel terrible that my negative comment has any weight in this thread. I don't want to be a detractor. It's just that this is not for me. People work hard to make things and you can't please everybody. You definitely…

Yeah, so we started diode 3 months ago and in the beginning here we're focused mostly on making electronics more accessible to youth/beginners.

One major advantage of web based tools is shareability and we hope to see content creators writing articles with embedded diode projects so that tutorials can include inline interactive examples.

This is already common in the software world with tools like codesandbox and stackblitz, but not so much in the hardware world. Hardware tutorials often include fritzing diagrams, but we think the next step is interactive simulations anywhere and everywhere.

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

#62

Post by marmetio »

CoffeePython wrote: post #4
melony wrote: post #2

Are you using SPICE for the actual simulation?

Hey! I work on Diode w/ Austin (OP). Yeah we use a wasm-compiled version of ngSpice for the circuit simulation.

How will Diode differentiate itself from TINA? They have 3D breadboard, web browser, microcontroller code simulation, PCB layout, equation extraction, etc.

https://www.tina.com/edison/

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

#63

Post by ilyt »

Kwpolska wrote: post #8

The competition might look ancient, but IMO, a 2D interface would be much more productive and easier to work with. This site is completely unusable for me in Firefox (it does work in Edge though).

If you have ever used LTSpice you'd know, the "old" looking layout is not really a problem but the arcane way anything is done, different from every app I ever used.

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

#64

Post by nomel »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #30

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…

Maybe a checkbox to "show parasitic components".

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

#65

Post by salmo »

Kwpolska wrote: post #8

The competition might look ancient, but IMO, a 2D interface would be much more productive and easier to work with. This site is completely unusable for me in Firefox (it does work in Edge though).

The tools with origins >2003 are pretty useless beyond making things out of prefab parts. That’s cool for beginner stuff, but I feel like we’re dropping people off a cliff from there. Most are really just sales platforms for parts or PCBs.

My workflow is a complicated combination of LTSpice, KiCAD, prototyping from the schematic and then ordering PCBs. It’s a little painful, but the tools are fast to use. I wish KiCAD’s SPICE integration was as natural as LTSpice and I could maintain 1 library of parts.

Breadboards are getting too painful for me to use. Too much time dealing with bad connections or noise from jumper wires being little antennas. It’s more of an issue with audio circuits than digital.

I guess my dream is if you could easily get a symbol, footprint, SPICE model, and 3D model of parts from vendors that all dropped into 1 toolchain.

Maybe a commercial offering is more like that. I’ve never really looked.

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

#66

Post by malerba118 »

gnramires wrote: post #59

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…

Wokwi is an awesome tool! We're actually using wokwi's open-sourced avr simulator to power arduinos in diode.

One thing wokwi doesn't do however is analog simulation so we're hoping to combine spice simulations with arduino, rpi, esp32, etc.

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

#67

Post by dheera »

Kwpolska wrote: post #8

The competition might look ancient, but IMO, a 2D interface would be much more productive and easier to work with. This site is completely unusable for me in Firefox (it does work in Edge though).

Agreed. I can't figure out for the life of me how to move this LED upward in the Z direction. Or bend the pins so I can plug the LED into 2 different Arduino pins e.g. GND and A0. I have the same problem with most 3D software, I have a 2D mouse and it's a fundamentally inadequate human interface device to manipulate things in 3 dimensions.

https://imgur.com/wF5voVO

I think a modern 2D UI (i.e. with nice looking fonts, swipe gestures, hamburger icons, generous margins and space) would be nice.

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

#68

Post by dylan604 »

guerrilla wrote: post #43
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #30

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…

Fritzing can kind of make breadboards from schematics, but doesn't have a 3D view... which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D?

>which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D?

James Cameron would like a word with you. Seriously though, 3D can show off some things that just might not be realized without it. Not sure of Fritzing's design abilities with layered PCBs, but I could imagine trying to design a layered board and forgetting how tall a component is. Seeing a component "through" the second layer could be useful

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