Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#2I have not found Flux to be particularly useful. For schematic design and PCB layout KiCAD is my go-to. Flux was difficult to use and the purported AI assistance was non-existent.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#3Digikey has made Ultra Librarian famous. I wouldn't be surprised if they were connected somehow. About 80% of Digikey components have models. About 80% of those are Ultra Librarian models. About 95% of the models are correct, which is a lot better than a few years ago.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#4I spent several months working with Flux, and while I actually generally enjoyed the UI and web-based approach, I had to switch back to KiCAD because there were so many dealbreaking bugs in fundamental features.
The realtime collaboration was just straight up broken; as in, my collaborator would make changes that would not manifest until I refreshed. This is unacceptable.
The PCB tracing was unusable because you could not control the wires and things would appear in strange places. Forget auto-routing... I had trouble just getting it to connect wires.
I could go on at (great) length, but while I genuinely am rooting for the team behind this product, I can't recommend it until they prioritize getting the fundamentals working properly over adding new AI features.
That said, in attempting to work through these issues, I gained a healthy amount of respect for how hard it is to create a viable new entry in this domain. For whatever reason, it often seems culturally normalized to shit on Flux and I think this is toxic and unproductive.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#5Digikey has made Ultra Librarian famous. I wouldn't be surprised if they were connected somehow. About 80% of Digikey components have models. About 80% of those are Ultra Librarian models. About 95% of the models are correct, which is a lot better than a few years ago.
All of it is better than a few years ago.
I needed something with really complex footprint that no one had, I contacted SnapEDA, and for $50 they did a model and footprint in less than a day. Extremely worth the money in that case.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#6Now it needs to be integrated with atopile.
It'd be nice to be able to describe the circuit as simple code, compile it, and then get it in the mail a couple of days later.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#7I spent several months working with Flux, and while I actually generally enjoyed the UI and web-based approach, I had to switch back to KiCAD because there were so many dealbreaking bugs in fundamental features. The realtime collaboration was just straight up broken; as in, my collaborator would make changes that would not manifest until I refreshed. This is unacceptable. The PCB tracing was unusable because you coul…
Partnering with Ultra Librarian is simply going to make me more inclined to shit on Flux, though. And I don't even know anything about Flux.
These "library managers" like Ultra Librarian and SnapEDA are a pox upon the ecosystem. The symbols and footprints have non-open source licenses, so you nominally can't share them. They simply want to get in the middle of your design so that they can monetize you.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#8I spent several months working with Flux, and while I actually generally enjoyed the UI and web-based approach, I had to switch back to KiCAD because there were so many dealbreaking bugs in fundamental features. The realtime collaboration was just straight up broken; as in, my collaborator would make changes that would not manifest until I refreshed. This is unacceptable. The PCB tracing was unusable because you coul…
I don't see how it's possible to beat companies like Altium that have been continually improving the sch and pcb design experience for the last 30 years.
The AI is a cool idea. Maybe as an add-on? An import? A library? Collaboration? IDK, but details like via tenting properties on layer 3 are best left to the experts.
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#9I spent several months working with Flux, and while I actually generally enjoyed the UI and web-based approach, I had to switch back to KiCAD because there were so many dealbreaking bugs in fundamental features. The realtime collaboration was just straight up broken; as in, my collaborator would make changes that would not manifest until I refreshed. This is unacceptable. The PCB tracing was unusable because you coul…
Partnering with Ultra Librarian is simply going to make me more inclined to shit on Flux, though. And I don't even know anything about Flux. These "library managers" like Ultra Librarian and SnapEDA are a pox upon the ecosystem. The symbols and footprints have non-open source licenses, so you nominally can't share them. They simply want to get in the middle of your design so that they can monetize you.
Damn, I am apparently woefully ignorant of this. As someone who is somehow both intimidated and fatigued of having to track down multiple assets for every item in my BOM, DigiKey's downloadables have been huge win... or so I thought?
How does the licensing issue actually manifest in a practical sense? By what mechanism(s) could this monetization occur? Is this sabre rattling or are small hardware designers actually getting bills for using premade footprints and models?
Re: Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware
#10Now it needs to be integrated with atopile. It'd be nice to be able to describe the circuit as simple code, compile it, and then get it in the mail a couple of days later.
That looks cool.