13 ms·
Electronic Circuit Simulator in the Browser
- okket 8y agoRepository: https://github.com/sharpie7/circuitjs1 https://github.com/sharpie7/circuitjs1
- teraflop 8y agoNice! I've been using this tool on an occasional basis for years (since long before it was converted from a Java applet to JS) and I noticed that the source code was available for download, but I had no idea it had switched to a fully open-source development model.
- olafalo 8y agoThis is a fantastic tool! When I was younger, it was great to be able to experiment without needing any hardware and while having more visibility into what was happening. Especially cool that it lets you play with memristors.
- Hupriene 8y agoI used and enjoyed circuitlab.io until it went for-pay only. Nice to have an easy to use free alternative for very casual hobbyists like me.
- lbenes 8y agoIf you don't mind using a desktop app, there are still many great tools for hobbyists and for teaching. Recently I've used: Qucs: https://sourceforge.net/projects/qucs/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/qucs/ Circuitmod: https://sourceforge.net/projects/circuitmod https://sourceforge.net/projects/circuitmod These were also in my bookmarks of tools I've explored: CEDAR Logic Simulator: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cedarlogic https://sourceforge.net/projects/cedarlogic Logisim: https://sourceforge.net/projects/circuit/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/circuit/ For teaching LogicWorks is still my favorite.
- zokier 8y agoKiCAD 5 was recently released (congrats team!) and it got ngspice integration which sounds neat. Haven't yet had time to try it out, but what I've seen so far looks promising. Of course with SPICE (and really any simulator) the problem is creating/finding good models for your parts or even generic ones.
- compumike 8y agoThat would be https://www.circuitlab.com/ https://www.circuitlab.com/ -- I built it :) Edit: if anyone wants, reply with your CircuitLab username and I'll give you a free membership upgrade when I get home this evening.
- nathancahill 8y agoThanks for building that. Awesome piece of software. Helped me a lot when I was dabbling in hardware coming from software.
- efosmark 8y agoHey that's cool. Username is efosmark.
- sprawl_ 8y agoThanks! I'm sprawl2
- tkems 8y agoThanks, great site! My username is TKems
- kstenerud 8y agoCool, just signed up as kstenerud. Never knew something like this existed!
- aisamu 8y agoIf that's also true for brand-new users, the username is the same!
- sleavey 8y agoCool - my username is "seandss" - much appreciated, thank you!
- sovietmudkipz 8y agoaallbrig Thanks Mike!
- wrs 8y ago
- usermac 8y agoWhat a wonderful site.
- Filligree 8y agoWhile we're on the subject, allow me to plug Electrical Age: https://electrical-age.net/ https://electrical-age.net/ It's a minecraft mod, yes. It's also a fully functional DC electrical simulation, with realism as a primary focus. Any inaccuracies are either strictly required (= it runs at 20Hz for most purposes), or allowances for decent gameplay. (Or bugs. Those are probably my fault.)
- hhh 8y agoIt's a very nice mod. I love designing systems in modded Minecraft, it's very fun and relaxing.
- kitd 8y agoA colleague of mine wrote a mod for controlling an IBM WebSphere app server via a virtual control panel in MC.
- NotQuantum 8y agoDon't discount your mod because it's made for Minecraft, this looks like a lot of fun!
- shesto 8y agoho wo use that lol to leasrn circuits ?
- jtms 8y agoMinecraft is an amazing learning tool even for adults! I used Minecraft as a "build along" tool for fully understanding logic gates while reading "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" (which I highly recommend - great book!). I used a mod called "red power" to make laying out the circuits much easier (the color coded, bundled cables alone were worth using it). Perhaps I will have to fire up Minecraft and take Electrical Age for a spin - it looks REALLY cool!
- Kagerjay 8y agoPeople don't realize how much crazy stuff originates from minecraft. For instance, battle royale (e.g. fortnite, pubg, realm royale, etc). That came from a minecraft mod based on hunger games before Arma+dayZ implemented it on their end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game But there's way more cooler stuff than that coming out of minecraft. We have people building full blown computers in minecraft too. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPaI5BJxs5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPaI5BJxs5M You can even livestream yourself on a TV screen that you make on minecraft. Example: https://youtu.be/IdlZRhKmWJY?t=327 https://youtu.be/IdlZRhKmWJY?t=327
- TwiztidK 8y agoI'm currently teaching an electronics class and have used this site heavily for in-class demonstrations. Some of the concepts (like a Push-Pull amplifier) are much easier to understand when you can see a visualization of how it works.
- virgil_disgr4ce 8y agoSAME!! I don't know how I taught these subjects before I found Falstad. <3
- Taniwha 8y agoI teach an occasional "electronics without math (except ohms law)" class at the local makerspace - I've been using falstad ever since they showed up (many thanks!)
- virgil_disgr4ce 8y agoIt's funny to see this here—I've been a MEGA FAN of Falstad for many years now, and I use this and many of his other tools in every single one of my classes. If y'all don't know about this site, he's made SO MANY incredibly excellent and informative tools it boggles the mind. Seriously people, this guy is a freaking genius. I want to meet him just so I can shake his hand, thank him, and buy him about a million beers.
- rightbyte 8y agoFalstad saved me during my university year. If just all field's had this type of material ...
- jpmoyn 8y agoFalstad ruined me during my university years, but i think we are talking about two different Falstads
- Tade0 8y agoI remember when this was still a Java applet - nice to see that it has been since rewritten in JS. I credit this app for being able to pass the first half of my sophomore year at University - just months before I failed four courses(the allowance was two) and was given a chance by the dean to redeem myself.
- kmm 8y agoI was really happy to see it got rewritten in JS as well, because Java applets are a pain (or just plain impossible). Sadly, the JS version is also a lot slower, I don't know how that could have gotten prevented
- slededit 8y agoWebassembly tends to help by a good margin.
- oplav 8y agoSame here. This was a very useful tool to help build intuition around the theoretical homework problems from the intro circuits classes.
- fady 8y agoAwesome site. I've been using Circuit Jam for Android for years. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.circuitjam&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.circuitjam... I love that I can now play with this while on my computer and with monitors..
- markbnj 8y agoAlways wanted to make one of these. Nice job!
- vinylkey 8y agoHow do I get the scope output for circuits that I build?
- teraflop 8y agoYou can add scope plots by right-clicking on any component and selecting "View in scope".
- TimTheTinker 8y agoWow, this would have been a game changer when I was taking EE courses. So much better than a half-working SPICE port on Mac OS X 10.2.
- Immortalin 8y agoWhile we are at this subject, here's an electron wrapper of this I made for using in school environments: https://github.com/Immortalin/Simulacra https://github.com/Immortalin/Simulacra
- santix 8y agoNice site! That example circuit is called a resonant circuit and the oscillation that is seen after the power supply is removed happens because both the capacitor (C) and the inductor (or coil, L) store energy—in electric and magnetic fields, respectively—and start feeding each other.
- Taniwha 8y agoFYI try this: set the 100 ohm resistor to 1 ohm set the 15uF cap to 15pF close the switch, open it again - check out the spark (or rather the stupidly high voltage)
- shove 8y agoI designed an actual board with this. Would have been SOL without it.
- ironix 8y agoThis tool is the lowest-barrier-to-entry to get into circuit design -- used the applet after trying commercial/trial tools (including "cloud-based" ones), and all failed me.
- wybiral 8y agoI found this thing years ago and still occasionally go to it to play around with different circuit concepts. Very cool!
- sleavey 8y agoI'll throw my hat into the ring as well. I have also recently been building a small signal AC analysis circuit simulator [1]. The main idea behind it is to convert a closed source tool that has been around for years within the LIGO scientific collaboration to one that is open source and implemented in Python. It's almost functionally complete, can simulate transfer functions and (accurate) noise from op-amps, resistors, capacitors and inductors in circuits with current or voltage sources. There is a library of popular op-amps for which we've measured the noise, open loop gain and various other parameters, available to be simulated with. [1] https://git.ligo.org/sean-leavey/circuit https://git.ligo.org/sean-leavey/circuit
- zokier 8y agoIs there some fundamental differences between this and the more established simulators like (ng)spice and QUCS? Trying to understand the rationale of building your own
- sleavey 8y agoWhen LISO (the tool my project is based on) was first made, SPICE simulators couldn't properly handle "realistic" op-amp parameters, like finite open loop gain, strange phase shifts due to output impedance especially of FET-based op-amps, realistic noise, stability of circuits containing feedback loops, etc. Furthermore, SPICE models provided by manufacturers typically don't represent the real behaviour of their op-amps, especially when it comes to noise, so the idea was to build a tool to which you can give arbitrary, perhaps measured, noise spectra. LISO also contains a brilliant fitting routine which can take a measured transfer function or noise spectrum and fit circuit parameters (e.g. op-amp noise, resistor values, etc.) to the data. It first uses some standard fitting algorithm (e.g. Nelder-Mead) to get close to the possible minimum, then uses a custom optimisation in log space to get the global minimum. If I remember correctly the author published a paper on this, and I can try to find it if someone is interested.
- AYBABTME 8y agoLooks pretty cool but the input is pretty esoteric to a newbie like me: https://git.ligo.org/sean-leavey/circuit/blob/master/examples/liso/liso2.fil https://git.ligo.org/sean-leavey/circuit/blob/master/example... Same thing about the output format: https://git.ligo.org/sean-leavey/circuit/blob/master/examples/liso/liso1.out https://git.ligo.org/sean-leavey/circuit/blob/master/example... Is this a custom file format or a well known one? Also, the references to LISO are all behind a user/password wall, which makes it hard to learn: https://wiki.projekt.uni-hannover.de/aei-geo-q/start/software/liso#download https://wiki.projekt.uni-hannover.de/aei-geo-q/start/softwar...
- dujoducom 8y agoWoah, I learned so much about electronics using the old java applet!
- raziel2701 8y agoIs there a way to use this without an internet connection?
- newman8r 8y agoYes, you can install the java version on your local machine. http://www.falstad.com/circuit-java/ http://www.falstad.com/circuit-java/ I've done this in the past and it works just fine.
- childintime 8y agoDon't forget to do Options->European resistors! This is a favorite among collegues. I believe at http://lushprojects.com/circuitjs/circuitjs.html http://lushprojects.com/circuitjs/circuitjs.html already this is already marked.
- gkhartman 8y agoI used this to better visualize the circuits in my undergrad physics courses. I remember searching for a good animated representation of a curtain type of circuit with the expectation of finding some decent gifs/videos, but I stumbled upon this web app instead. :)
- vhost- 8y agoI built a simple keyboard matrix with a "scanner": http://tinyurl.com/yanykyws http://tinyurl.com/yanykyws That LED represents a something (probably firmware on the keyboard) reacting to the switch being pressed by a user. Edit: I used a decade counter with a 5 col matrix for simplicity. I was using a 4 bit binary counter, but the browser started really bogging down with a bunch of components.
- shesto 8y agoi think i watched this before ony guy whos is korean student somewhere in USA, teches via YT very cool stuff... glad this is here.
- agumonkey 8y agoon the topic of circuit analysis, read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodal_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodal_analysis and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_(electrical_circuits) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_(electrical_circuits) lots of interesting bits
- alphabetter 8y agoPaul Falstad did (and does) all the heavy lifting for this project, but the co-host of the JS version at lushprojects.com is my site and I did the original port from a Java applet to a GWT application that complies to JS. Glad to know so many people find it useful. I always thought it was a great visualisation tool which I why I wanted to put the effort in to do the port. Off to bed now, but if people have questions I'll take a look at the discussion again in the morning.
- Something1234 8y agoWhere do I learn to write simulations like this? I'm doing numerical models this summer, and it feels like a lot of the notation is inconsistent, unlike programming.
- Sean1708 8y agoWhat's your background? I ask because if you need to learn the physics behind how circuits behave then that's going to be a lot more difficult to self-teach than just learning how to solve differential equations computationally.
- Something1234 8y agoI've done a little bit of arduino nothing too impressive, and I've had basic physics. I'm still having issues understanding how graphs(the data structure) come into play and how to count the resistance in those situations. I've read several books on basic electricity. As for calculus I've only had calc 1. What should be my path to learn more about these simulations?
- bjt2n3904 8y agoThis app really helped me through my degree, especially the internals of the 555 timer. Very intuitive and simple to use, but as soon as I found it, I knew it had a lifespan running as a Java plugin. Rejoiced profusely when I learned it was ported to JS! Thanks for the effort!
- 8y ago
- ladberg 8y agoI have 8 bookmarks in my browser and this has been one of them for the past two years. It's incredibly useful for EE stuff and fun to just mess around in.
- Animats 8y agoThat's very nice. I've used LTSpice extensively, but this was very helpful for understanding phase-locked loops. Seeing the current flow in the wires helps.
- duncancarroll 8y agoYes! I've wanted something like this since I was 12 and could never understand why it didn't exist. How else was I to learn circuitry at that age? Thanks!
- asusta 8y agoThanks circuit lab username:asusta
- dingo_bat 8y ago555 internals looks beautiful. I wish I had this when studying 555 for the first time.
- kulu2002 8y agoUsed SPICE (PSpice) simulation tool a lot during college some 12 years back... but this is pretty nice and much easier
- p1mrx 8y agoWhen I made this 3-phase source, the voltages were out of whack until I reset the simulation. Perhaps the phase offsets are relative to the time of placement, instead of some absolute reference? http://tinyurl.com/y7dlszq2 http://tinyurl.com/y7dlszq2
- devxpy 8y agoThat's great, but we really need something like this that can allow us to simulate microcontrollers / raspberry pi. Development would become really simple for us software guys then !
- btell 8y agopretty neat, ive used http://www.partsim.com/ http://www.partsim.com/ before - nice to see more simulations in the browser
- kragen 8y agoI wanted to build this from source to use offline, but so far I can't figure out how; the source is in Java, compiled to JS with GWT, and I haven't figured out how to install GWT yet. I've really enjoyed using it online. Has anyone done a validation study comparing this simulator to a known-good simulator like Berkeley SPICE?
- joshvm 8y agoYou can download a jar version, though perhaps it's older code. Still works fine: www.falstad.com/circuit-java/
- kragen 8y agoCool! I've installed it and it seems to work plausibly, though it's an old enough version that its "export URL" function is no longer compatible with the site. And the site has more features. The validation question is interesting to me because I'd like to do things that go beyond just academic exercises, so I'd like to know how much confidence to have that the physical devices behave as modeled.
- johnaquilio 8y agoA variation on this that has 3D graphics, visual effects etc. is https://www.electricVLab.com https://www.electricVLab.com