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Dear HN Community, I wanted to introduce our startup SnapEDA to the HN community. We recently completed Y Combinator, and have been quiet about the platform wh

Dear HN Community, I wanted to introduce our startup SnapEDA to the HN community. We recently completed Y Combinator, and have been quiet about the platform while we've been improving it. With that said, we’d love to get feedback from the HN community! Our goal is to build a canonical library for making circuit boards: one trusted, centralized place to get digital models. These digital models include PCB footprints, schematic symbols, and 3D models. The library exports to a growing set of popular EDA tools: EAGLE, Altium, KiCad, Cadence OrCad/Allegro (Beta), & Mentor PADS (Beta). The library is free because we believe in making this data widely accessible to enable innovation. The purpose of this new feature, InstaPart, is to give designers an option to "skip the queue" and get a part quickly if it doesn't yet exist in the free library. Once that part is made, it is then made available for the entire community to download for free. Growing the library is a top area of focus, so we hope to eventually render the InstaPart feature obsolete and just have everything available natively. :-) In terms of standards, all new libraries are being made to IPC, and we also source models by partnering with component manufacturers. To ensure quality, we have an automated verification checker on each part page that provides a pass/fail result on common manufacturing issues that we plan to expand with additional checks. Thanks HN! Natasha

justinlaing 10y ago
Awesome added service! :)
MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
This is something that should exist, and I hope you can find ways to finance it sustainably. What are your plans?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  We plan to work with component manufacturers to make sure their parts are well-represented on SnapEDA. We also have Premium versions for users who need more functionality. You can learn more at https://www.snapeda.com/pricing https://www.snapeda.com/pricing.
  - makomk 10y ago
    "You can sign up for a 10-day free trial of SnapEDA premium. During the trial period, you can cancel any time in your Account Settings. After the trial ends, you will be charged $297 ($99/month, billed quarterly)." This stinks of dark patterns and maximizing the amount you can hit people who forget to cancel for before they notice. It's rather unlikely that someone would actually want to pay quarterly at the higher monthly rate.
    - natashabaker 10y ago
      If you don't want to sign up for a subscription, you can purchase individual parts for the $29. Also, our free version is really powerful so if you're not in a rush, you can stick with that one. :-)
      - akiselev 10y ago
        That doesn't answer the dark pattern concern at all and you're just dodging the issue. When people hear trial they think "free time to make my decision" not "10 days for $300" which is what this will be for anyone who forgets to cancel (hint: any EE on a deadline but I guess you know that). This is just predatory.
        natashabaker 10y ago
        Thanks for the feedback. It might make sense to remove the free trial then because the main feature in it is just parts requests which people can now test with this new InstaPart feature.
        akiselev 10y ago
        If you have other killer features in the trial then just provide discounts for parts (say $19 during the trial) and remove the dark pattern instead of removing trials all together. I actually do need this service now and $29 per part is a drop in the bucket, especially since a lot of parts I need have nonstandard footprints. I can check and correct a footprint against a datasheet much faster than I can draw it so there's little risk to my deadline but the trial dark pattern is very off putting even if $300 is nothing compared to revenue. I'd love a service like this but it won't save me more than 2-4 days of work during a 2-3 month long contract so soft concerns like this can easily keep me from paying for a product.
Eridrus 10y ago
Could you explain this for someone without any hardware experience?
- mastax 10y ago
  So you're designing a little board in KiCad and you want to add an LPC1768 to it to do some processing. You need to get a schematic representation and a physical footprint of the part into your CAD software. You could spend an hour carefully reading the datasheet and recreating all of the pins and landing pads, but this is the 21st century! You look at the manufacturer's website, SparkFun's part library, google a bit, and you can't find premade files for the part. So you go on InstaPart and pay $29 and someone at SnapEDA does the work for you and then releases the files for free. Now they're listed on the SnapEDA database for anyone to use, and you know that they're going to be correct.
  - DiThi 10y ago
    IMHO this should be the description in the landing page. With this (and the new KiCad) I'm considering going back to PCB design.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Imagine you wanted to build a spaceship out of lego but first needed to mould each block. If you wanted to build a circuit board, you would need a digital model of each component, and these are often made from scratch because designers can't find one readily available. Likely someone at a nearby company, or even a nearby cubicle, has already made that model. So this wasted effort hinders innovation and is a huge productivity drain. SnapEDA makes a huge database of these models available that hardware designers can drag-and-drop into their designs.
- analog31 10y ago
  Just adding a bit to what the others have said, you could almost think of the "parts" in a CAD program as being akin to the templates in a header file for a C library, i.e., they provide a symbolic representation plus an interface definition that are joined together. In the case of electronic CAD, a "part" is what the part looks like in the schematic diagram, typically a box with numbered and labeled connections, and a representation of its physical dimensions and the location of its connections. Somebody has made sure that the physical details are correct, and that pin 23 on the schematic is pin 23 on the physical board. Creating these parts is kind of a form of costly drudge work for designers, and errors in those parts can be hard to correct when your prototype doesn't work for some mysterious reason.
bramv 10y ago
Lookw great! I used many footprints from SnapEDA before. In many cases I prefer to draw the schematic symbol myself though. I like organizing the pins in a way it fits nicely in the schematic. It takes a bit more time to start but it makes the schematic cleaner and easier to maintain.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  That's awesome to hear! Would love to chat at some point and learn more about your preferences with symbols. We'd definitely like to see if we could incorporate more user preferences there.
extrapickles 10y ago
I've had to use a few parts that claimed to follow a standard footprint, but where subtly off. Another part I've used if you read the datasheet carefully you ended up with a completely different footprint than what first glance would suggest which is my biggest problem with upverters part concierge as they helpfully "fix" my footprint to the incorrect one. Will we be able to comment on the footprints or leave reviews on how well that footprint worked?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Yes. Here's an example of a part page: https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Technology/view-part/ https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Tec... On this page, you'll notice the following: 1. You can upvote or downvote the part 2. You can leave a comment on the part 3. We have automated algorithms that uncover common defects in parts on the Validations tab. This is a patent-pending technology we developed that we plan to expand further to include more checks.
  - chamakits 10y ago
    Oh wow, I hadn't thought of this, but it's so obvious! I personally haven't dealt with hardware since college, but if you pull this off, you will be the go to source for every single student working on a project or lab that's wondering why the part they just bought is not working according the datasheet. It would have saved me many hours, and that's just as a student, can't imagine for those that depend on those datasheets professionally. Wish you the best of luck, this sounds very promising.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Shiiiiiiiiiiit, this is awesome. I spend quite a bit of time trying to find components, and you never know whether the footprint is correct or whether you're in for an unpleasant surprise. Thanks for this! I'm especially loving the fact that you do KiCAD exports.
  - Animats 10y ago
    "Upvote" should mean more than "I liked it". It's too easy to get likes. Something that says "I used this footprint to make a board, and the part soldered into place OK" would be helpful.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
This is awesome, I'll have to see if I can import them into Proteus (labcenter electronics EDA package)
- natashabaker 10y ago
  We haven't tested it yet but if Proteus supports P-CAD then you can try downloading an Altium format which we export currently to P-CAD file format. Let us know how it goes.
soneil 10y ago
I hope this is constructive, but that chat invitation on every freaking page drove me off the site. By time I'd logged in and searched for two parts, the incessant chirping and popups of Clippy were too much.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Very constructive, thanks. We recently installed the app (Intercom) and it has really helped provide a channel for feedback which we have then used to prioritize improvements. I'll talk to my team about reducing the number of pages the automated pop up shows up on though.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    You're targeting engineers and advanced hobbyists. Don't distract us. If we need help, we'll find the right icon to click on, don't worry.
  - simcop2387 10y ago
    One of the ways I've seen it done, and done it at previous companies is to not present it to every user on page view. Pop it up for only 10%, even if you have a button/link/menu to bring it up for everyone. That way you can solicit feedback while still gaining a lot of the benefits of having live interaction. It'll also still give you some insight to where the chat is most useful, but it'll take longer to gather useful data on what pages it gets used the most.
    - sockopen 10y ago
      I'm cool with a cookie and an [X] or a Close button on warnings / notifications / advertisements / popups / music controllers so you know that I have seen it, and do not want it displayed to me again.
  - soneil 10y ago
    I think a callout the first couple of times is fine (still not my preference, but I think this is a cultural thing - the US style "how can I help you" in retail rubs me up the wrong way too). But I think after that it'd be very much preferable to taper off - especially the sounds. As another commenter said, know your audience - your icon is obvious and descriptive, so we don't need to be told 20 times what it does.
Fiahil 10y ago
> and verified using proprietary patent-pending verification technology Is "proprietary patent-pending technology" really necessary? It's the kind of phrasing seen on uninteresting product trying to pretend they're interesting (ex: "Our Proprietary Patent-Pending Technology Makes Our Product So Great This Single Mom Can't Even Talk About It. Discover Now For $99.99")
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Especially since "Patent Pending" is basically code for "Screw the marketplace of ideas, pay us."
- Kliment 10y ago
  Indeed, it's an awesome product but being so excited about patents causes an instinctive disgust reaction, at least in my case.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Here's our motivation for that wording: We know how important verification is and we spent a ton of time building an automated verification system (still in Beta) that provides transparency into common issues with CAD models. It can uncover and display defects, such as the centroid not being at 0,0 which will cause issues with pick-and-place machines, eventually pin mapping issues as well. We were trying to find a way to succinctly communicate this focus & investment into verification technology which differentiates us from any other library in the market. Apparently that was not communicated well and we'll re-word to make this more clear. :-)
funkaster 10y ago
Is there any way to get support? I've been having problems trying to login or do anything since yesterday, but your support (or contact) email is bouncing...
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Ah sorry we switched our email servers yesterday afternoon. Info@snapeda.com is back up and running, or you can also contact us through the chatbot in the lower right corner of the website.
  - funkaster 10y ago
    still bouncing... I'll try the chatbot. You might want to remove the email from your page. It's very frustrating to try to contact a company, but all the info on their website points to a non-working email :(
    - natashabaker 10y ago
      It's definitely fixed now.

justinlaing 10y ago

Awesome added service! :)

MrBuddyCasino 10y ago

This is something that should exist, and I hope you can find ways to finance it sustainably. What are your plans?

natashabaker 10y ago
We plan to work with component manufacturers to make sure their parts are well-represented on SnapEDA. We also have Premium versions for users who need more functionality. You can learn more at https://www.snapeda.com/pricing https://www.snapeda.com/pricing.
- makomk 10y ago
  "You can sign up for a 10-day free trial of SnapEDA premium. During the trial period, you can cancel any time in your Account Settings. After the trial ends, you will be charged $297 ($99/month, billed quarterly)." This stinks of dark patterns and maximizing the amount you can hit people who forget to cancel for before they notice. It's rather unlikely that someone would actually want to pay quarterly at the higher monthly rate.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    If you don't want to sign up for a subscription, you can purchase individual parts for the $29. Also, our free version is really powerful so if you're not in a rush, you can stick with that one. :-)
    - akiselev 10y ago
      That doesn't answer the dark pattern concern at all and you're just dodging the issue. When people hear trial they think "free time to make my decision" not "10 days for $300" which is what this will be for anyone who forgets to cancel (hint: any EE on a deadline but I guess you know that). This is just predatory.
      - natashabaker 10y ago
        Thanks for the feedback. It might make sense to remove the free trial then because the main feature in it is just parts requests which people can now test with this new InstaPart feature.
        akiselev 10y ago
        If you have other killer features in the trial then just provide discounts for parts (say $19 during the trial) and remove the dark pattern instead of removing trials all together. I actually do need this service now and $29 per part is a drop in the bucket, especially since a lot of parts I need have nonstandard footprints. I can check and correct a footprint against a datasheet much faster than I can draw it so there's little risk to my deadline but the trial dark pattern is very off putting even if $300 is nothing compared to revenue. I'd love a service like this but it won't save me more than 2-4 days of work during a 2-3 month long contract so soft concerns like this can easily keep me from paying for a product.

Eridrus 10y ago

Could you explain this for someone without any hardware experience?

mastax 10y ago
So you're designing a little board in KiCad and you want to add an LPC1768 to it to do some processing. You need to get a schematic representation and a physical footprint of the part into your CAD software. You could spend an hour carefully reading the datasheet and recreating all of the pins and landing pads, but this is the 21st century! You look at the manufacturer's website, SparkFun's part library, google a bit, and you can't find premade files for the part. So you go on InstaPart and pay $29 and someone at SnapEDA does the work for you and then releases the files for free. Now they're listed on the SnapEDA database for anyone to use, and you know that they're going to be correct.
- DiThi 10y ago
  IMHO this should be the description in the landing page. With this (and the new KiCad) I'm considering going back to PCB design.
natashabaker 10y ago
Imagine you wanted to build a spaceship out of lego but first needed to mould each block. If you wanted to build a circuit board, you would need a digital model of each component, and these are often made from scratch because designers can't find one readily available. Likely someone at a nearby company, or even a nearby cubicle, has already made that model. So this wasted effort hinders innovation and is a huge productivity drain. SnapEDA makes a huge database of these models available that hardware designers can drag-and-drop into their designs.
analog31 10y ago
Just adding a bit to what the others have said, you could almost think of the "parts" in a CAD program as being akin to the templates in a header file for a C library, i.e., they provide a symbolic representation plus an interface definition that are joined together. In the case of electronic CAD, a "part" is what the part looks like in the schematic diagram, typically a box with numbered and labeled connections, and a representation of its physical dimensions and the location of its connections. Somebody has made sure that the physical details are correct, and that pin 23 on the schematic is pin 23 on the physical board. Creating these parts is kind of a form of costly drudge work for designers, and errors in those parts can be hard to correct when your prototype doesn't work for some mysterious reason.

bramv 10y ago

Lookw great! I used many footprints from SnapEDA before. In many cases I prefer to draw the schematic symbol myself though. I like organizing the pins in a way it fits nicely in the schematic. It takes a bit more time to start but it makes the schematic cleaner and easier to maintain.

natashabaker 10y ago
That's awesome to hear! Would love to chat at some point and learn more about your preferences with symbols. We'd definitely like to see if we could incorporate more user preferences there.

extrapickles 10y ago

I've had to use a few parts that claimed to follow a standard footprint, but where subtly off. Another part I've used if you read the datasheet carefully you ended up with a completely different footprint than what first glance would suggest which is my biggest problem with upverters part concierge as they helpfully "fix" my footprint to the incorrect one. Will we be able to comment on the footprints or leave reviews on how well that footprint worked?

natashabaker 10y ago
Yes. Here's an example of a part page: https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Technology/view-part/ https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Tec... On this page, you'll notice the following: 1. You can upvote or downvote the part 2. You can leave a comment on the part 3. We have automated algorithms that uncover common defects in parts on the Validations tab. This is a patent-pending technology we developed that we plan to expand further to include more checks.
- chamakits 10y ago
  Oh wow, I hadn't thought of this, but it's so obvious! I personally haven't dealt with hardware since college, but if you pull this off, you will be the go to source for every single student working on a project or lab that's wondering why the part they just bought is not working according the datasheet. It would have saved me many hours, and that's just as a student, can't imagine for those that depend on those datasheets professionally. Wish you the best of luck, this sounds very promising.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Shiiiiiiiiiiit, this is awesome. I spend quite a bit of time trying to find components, and you never know whether the footprint is correct or whether you're in for an unpleasant surprise. Thanks for this! I'm especially loving the fact that you do KiCAD exports.
- Animats 10y ago
  "Upvote" should mean more than "I liked it". It's too easy to get likes. Something that says "I used this footprint to make a board, and the part soldered into place OK" would be helpful.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

This is awesome, I'll have to see if I can import them into Proteus (labcenter electronics EDA package)

natashabaker 10y ago
We haven't tested it yet but if Proteus supports P-CAD then you can try downloading an Altium format which we export currently to P-CAD file format. Let us know how it goes.

soneil 10y ago

I hope this is constructive, but that chat invitation on every freaking page drove me off the site. By time I'd logged in and searched for two parts, the incessant chirping and popups of Clippy were too much.

natashabaker 10y ago
Very constructive, thanks. We recently installed the app (Intercom) and it has really helped provide a channel for feedback which we have then used to prioritize improvements. I'll talk to my team about reducing the number of pages the automated pop up shows up on though.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  You're targeting engineers and advanced hobbyists. Don't distract us. If we need help, we'll find the right icon to click on, don't worry.
- simcop2387 10y ago
  One of the ways I've seen it done, and done it at previous companies is to not present it to every user on page view. Pop it up for only 10%, even if you have a button/link/menu to bring it up for everyone. That way you can solicit feedback while still gaining a lot of the benefits of having live interaction. It'll also still give you some insight to where the chat is most useful, but it'll take longer to gather useful data on what pages it gets used the most.
  - sockopen 10y ago
    I'm cool with a cookie and an [X] or a Close button on warnings / notifications / advertisements / popups / music controllers so you know that I have seen it, and do not want it displayed to me again.
- soneil 10y ago
  I think a callout the first couple of times is fine (still not my preference, but I think this is a cultural thing - the US style "how can I help you" in retail rubs me up the wrong way too). But I think after that it'd be very much preferable to taper off - especially the sounds. As another commenter said, know your audience - your icon is obvious and descriptive, so we don't need to be told 20 times what it does.

Fiahil 10y ago

> and verified using proprietary patent-pending verification technology Is "proprietary patent-pending technology" really necessary? It's the kind of phrasing seen on uninteresting product trying to pretend they're interesting (ex: "Our Proprietary Patent-Pending Technology Makes Our Product So Great This Single Mom Can't Even Talk About It. Discover Now For $99.99")

CamperBob2 10y ago
Especially since "Patent Pending" is basically code for "Screw the marketplace of ideas, pay us."
Kliment 10y ago
Indeed, it's an awesome product but being so excited about patents causes an instinctive disgust reaction, at least in my case.
natashabaker 10y ago
Here's our motivation for that wording: We know how important verification is and we spent a ton of time building an automated verification system (still in Beta) that provides transparency into common issues with CAD models. It can uncover and display defects, such as the centroid not being at 0,0 which will cause issues with pick-and-place machines, eventually pin mapping issues as well. We were trying to find a way to succinctly communicate this focus & investment into verification technology which differentiates us from any other library in the market. Apparently that was not communicated well and we'll re-word to make this more clear. :-)

funkaster 10y ago

Is there any way to get support? I've been having problems trying to login or do anything since yesterday, but your support (or contact) email is bouncing...

natashabaker 10y ago
Ah sorry we switched our email servers yesterday afternoon. Info@snapeda.com is back up and running, or you can also contact us through the chatbot in the lower right corner of the website.
- funkaster 10y ago
  still bouncing... I'll try the chatbot. You might want to remove the email from your page. It's very frustrating to try to contact a company, but all the info on their website points to a non-working email :(
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    It's definitely fixed now.