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Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

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Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#61

Post by ipdashc »

owenversteeg wrote: post #59
ipdashc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even a total noob designing their first ever PCB As said noob, do you have any resources for basic PCB design/routing? Along the lines of a simple list of things to look out for? I've only ever done one, and for routing I basically did the "make two ground pours, then keep clicking until everything is connected" process that others have described in this thread. Probably about the same as I'd imagine an autorouter…

There are some absolute masters of PCB design on this site, I am far below that level, so take this all with a heap of salt. A lot of what follows is generally good advice but not everything is universally applicable. Basics: learn to use your EDA software, properly configure it with your board house's capabilities, get correct footprints, read and re-read and re-re-read the datasheets for everything you use. Study o…

Wow, this is super helpful. Thank you!

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#62

Post by AdamH12113 »

amelius wrote: post #18

What we need is a way to verify designs. Simulate the components, simulate RF parasitic effects, check the component voltage/current/power ratings ... Maybe _then_ we can trust LLMs to design stuff for us.

That’s probably not going to happen. RF simulations are done using extremely expensive special-purpose software, and many components (including basically all digital and mixed-signal components) don’t have simulation models available at all. If they were available, the computing power required to simulate even a medium-size board over any reasonable time scale would be impossible. Simulation is a small-scale thing; you don’t do it for a whole board.

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#63

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #19
05 wrote: post #16

Don't you need a bypass cap on AMS1117 LDO output for stability? Reference design uses two caps each on input and output..

There are numerous serious problems with this PCB. Even skimming the data sheets or design guides for the ESP32 or LDO would reveal them. I’m puzzled why the post calls it “surprisingly good” when it’s so bad and missing basic requirements for different parts. I guess it’s surprising that anything at all was produced, but it’s weird that the author can’t identify the basic problems with the design. This is similar to…

[deleted]

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#65

Post by stavros »

Animats wrote: post #10
Aurornis wrote: post #7

The blog post isn’t clear: Did the LLM actually do the routing? The only screenshot showing connected traces comes after the author says they added ground fills and “tidied up the layout” It’s amazing that this worked at all, but to be clear this layout is actually very bad. Just look at that minimum width trace used to carry power across the entire board and into the ESP32. Using min width traces and wrapping them a…

> Did the LLM actually do the routing? Good question. KiCAD once had a router, built in, or sort of built in, but it was taken out for licensing reasons. So who's doing that?

Why would anyone want a router? Routing is by far the most fun and relaxing part of PCB design! I'd pay for a game that just had me route PCBs.

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#66

Post by grues-dinner »

owenversteeg wrote: post #32
owenversteeg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong, but that looks like autoroute to me just based on the aesthetics of it, autoroute has a bit of a "smell" that you can recognize if you pay attention. For example see the via and traces to the left of SW2. No human I know, even a total noob designing their first ever PCB, would do that. Also, it certainly wasn't the LLM; atopile doesn't allow you to specify routing as far as I'm aware, their docs see…

Few other thoughts: - impressive that this worked so well with LLM-generated atopile, given that atopile is about a year old! - the hardest part of a PCB is still the routing and nonstandard parts of the design; what this did is basically "find a reference design, pick components that match the reference design, and put them on the correct nets" which is the easiest part of the process for people designing PCBs today…

> 99% of PCBs designed are fairly basic boards implementing the reference design with some small tweaks

This may be true of hobbyists, but is very much not true in industry.

Maybe all those millions of IoT devices skew the number of PCBs made that look a bit like an ESP32 plus a button and an LED, but most unique designs probably aren't those. Endless march of things like new super-dense PC/mobile motherboards and all the weird hyper-specific industrial electronics takes far more effort, say.

And no one is sweating the few days to design and lay them out to meet the constraints for a simple ESP32 + a button. Primarily the size and shape and power usage. That's not the hard bit of slinging mass-market IoT trinkets, the software side is.

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#67

Post by torginus »

grues-dinner wrote: post #66
owenversteeg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few other thoughts: - impressive that this worked so well with LLM-generated atopile, given that atopile is about a year old! - the hardest part of a PCB is still the routing and nonstandard parts of the design; what this did is basically "find a reference design, pick components that match the reference design, and put them on the correct nets" which is the easiest part of the process for people designing PCBs today…

> 99% of PCBs designed are fairly basic boards implementing the reference design with some small tweaks This may be true of hobbyists, but is very much not true in industry. Maybe all those millions of IoT devices skew the number of PCBs made that look a bit like an ESP32 plus a button and an LED, but most unique designs probably aren't those. Endless march of things like new super-dense PC/mobile motherboards and al…

I did work for a while in/with a small hardware company, and basically how we did things was we integrated a complex off-the shelf CPU board, to a custom 'host' board that housed application specific logic.

Signals integrity analysis used for integrating DRAM is a difficult skillset, requires trial and error, and if you manage all the design complexity somehow, manufacturing is likewise difficult. If you show up with a 8 layer PCB littered with BGA components, most manufacturers won't talk to you if you don't have volume or aren't willing to pay astronomical prices.

And let's not get into wireless - antenna design and interference testing is its own dark art, and even if you manage to make something that works, you have to certify it in every single country/economic block you want to sell to.

And all this to supplant a ready-made Pi Zero or ESP board. that costs basically nothing.

Clearly much bigger shops than ours have realized this - there are many high-volume commerical products that use a Raspberry PI as brains, or smart speakers using ESP32.

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#68

Post by aaronmdjones »

ipdashc wrote: post #61
owenversteeg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some absolute masters of PCB design on this site, I am far below that level, so take this all with a heap of salt. A lot of what follows is generally good advice but not everything is universally applicable. Basics: learn to use your EDA software, properly configure it with your board house's capabilities, get correct footprints, read and re-read and re-re-read the datasheets for everything you use. Study o…

Wow, this is super helpful. Thank you!

I have some further video recommendations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySuUZEjARPY ("How to achieve proper grounding")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYUYOXmo9UU ("Keys to control noise, interference, and EMI in PCBs")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG0Apol-oj0 ("What your differential pairs wish you knew")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RyBCnowLsI ("Secrets of PCB optimization")

These are all by Rick Hartley (from GP's comment) and they are all worth watching in this order.

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#69

Post by grues-dinner »

torginus wrote: post #67
grues-dinner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99% of PCBs designed are fairly basic boards implementing the reference design with some small tweaks This may be true of hobbyists, but is very much not true in industry. Maybe all those millions of IoT devices skew the number of PCBs made that look a bit like an ESP32 plus a button and an LED, but most unique designs probably aren't those. Endless march of things like new super-dense PC/mobile motherboards and al…

I did work for a while in/with a small hardware company, and basically how we did things was we integrated a complex off-the shelf CPU board, to a custom 'host' board that housed application specific logic. Signals integrity analysis used for integrating DRAM is a difficult skillset, requires trial and error, and if you manage all the design complexity somehow, manufacturing is likewise difficult. If you show up with…

I assume your application host board wasn't two LEDs and a button. Using a module is one thing, using essentially only a module is another.

My point is, laying out very simple hobbyist-level designs is not 99% of PCB design effort in the world (the original claim).

It's not "envelope-pushing crazy designs" (per the original) to have 500 or 1000 or more components on your board even if you do use a module to offload the CPU and radio (or the field bus in industrial contexts). That's just normal levels of complexity.

And even if you do make a boutique smart speaker with a module and can afford it because it's a high-end device with margins, if you get to real volume, saving a dollar a unit by integrating might be worth it: you can still see change of out the savings after getting a design consultancy to redo your board if you're shipping millions of units.

Re: Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

#70

Post by Szpadel »

Aurornis wrote: post #7

The blog post isn’t clear: Did the LLM actually do the routing? The only screenshot showing connected traces comes after the author says they added ground fills and “tidied up the layout” It’s amazing that this worked at all, but to be clear this layout is actually very bad. Just look at that minimum width trace used to carry power across the entire board and into the ESP32. Using min width traces and wrapping them a…

> It would be interesting to see if you could feed the file into an LLM and get it to produce the feedback.

I did something like that already and It works ok.

I'm just electonic amateur and it happened to me to incorrectly wire up MOSFET or using ptype incorrectly.

I basically send screenshot of schematic and ask for feedback or suggestions. it actually provide nice feedback and for someone not very experienced it's very reassuring to get green light from LLM.

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