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JITX – The Fastest Way to Design Circuit Boards
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoWell, this sure seems like an ad. Anyone actually use it? Probably not going to sway me away from KiCAD even for a moment.
- cushychicken 3y agoTheir offering is a CAD tool plugin, not a freestanding CAD tool.
- DHaldane 3y agoThank you for this comment! Would you pretty please help me debug my website - what makes JITX seem like a CAD plugin? (it is a freestanding tool)
- wrs 3y agoThe pricing page lists a bunch of CAD “integrations”, which aren’t mentioned on the home page, so maybe that’s confusingly implying that you need at least one CAD integration?
- DHaldane 3y agoRight - "none of the other tools try to integrate nicely, so if we support it well it must be necessary" is the thought to address.
- cushychicken 3y agoBecause all of your screenshots look like the standard Altium SCH and PCB symbol formats and color themes. The integrations that the other reply mentioned also threw me. I was excited by the “Kicad integration” checkmark. I don’t like the term “power user” but I have done a lot more with Kicad than most folks I know, and I don’t really want to go thru another EECAD learning curve.
- liminalsunset 3y agoEven after seeing this comment, I thought it was a CAD plugin as well. I think the main thing is that there is no screenshot of the entire UI or window of the program on your website. It looks like there's some VSCode and as others mention, other CAD software styles, leading to the impression that this is a plugin that you use alongside other things. The nature of the tool itself is another reason. It claims compatibility on the pricing page with various tools and says something along the lines of you can use your existing tools to finalize placement and routing, leading the user to think it's a plugin that automates some of it. I would suggest putting a more prominent link to your FAQ (https://www.jitx.com/blog/faq https://www.jitx.com/blog/faq) along with updating it with more information in it. Separately to this, I think it would be nice to have a more complex (more parts, some power and mixed signal elements) design on the website that users can easily browse and evaluate (view layout, schematic, animation/timelapse of design process), so that users can more easily visualize how it might work for an actual project. It seems like many of the examples are fairly simple currently but the power supply TPS chip is fine.
- DHaldane 3y agoThanks for the feedback -- very helpful.
- Karliss 3y agoEven the FAQ page that other comments linked repeats multiple times "quickly iterate on designs, and then use existing CAD tools to finalize placement, routing". If this was a fully featured freestanding CAD tool, you wouldn't need to do any finalizing of placement or routing in real CAD software, the final step would be directly exporting gerbers for manufacturing. Exporting to other CAD software would be only necessary for migrating design away from JITX. With how prominently the description mentions exporting to other CAD software, makes it sound like JITX lacks some essential parts of ECAD software, meaning that most users will want to export and do parts of work in "real" ECAD software. Can you fully complete most projects at professional level without using other ECAD software? Using other software for some specific tasks like simulation or testing is fine. I am talking only about parts which you expect to be included in most PCB design software.
- DHaldane 3y agoWelp - seems there are out of date parts of the website. We launched router last Tuesday so have to update that we are end to end now. Thanks for the pointer!
- zachbee 3y agoThere are so many different tools to help design and route PCBs now. You have DeepPCB, Flux, and Quilter doing auto-routing, and SKiDL, CuFlow, and JITX doing programmatic schematics (and also sometimes auto-routing?). To be honest, I don't really understand how these tools are differentiated from one another. I personally know the Quilter guys, so if I had to pick I'd use their product, but I don't think the market crowding here is great for anybody.
- krasin 3y ago> I don't think the market crowding here is great for anybody. In the end, the users will win from this crowding, I suppose.
- tonyarkles 3y ago>In the end, the users will win from this crowding, I suppose. I'm not so sure about that. A while ago I was really excited about Altium introducing CircuitStudio (the first iteration, I think they have a new product with the same name that's completely different). CircuitStudio was pitched as Altium-lite. I paid, I believe, $3000 for it (with some kind of maintenance license?) and absolutely loved it. A year or so later they reached out to me to let me know that they were changing their licensing costs to $900/year or something like that and that they wanted to reward me as an early adopter by giving me a lifetime license. But... the product didn't, as far as I can tell, ever get enough traction to actually become a long-term-viable product. Eagle, at the time, was I think $1000 for a professional license (way before Autodesk bought Eagle). CircuitStudio was, to me, a dramatically better product than Eagle. But where I've ended up with this... I have a perpetual license for a product that stopped getting updates years ago. No one I work with has software that's compatible with it and they can't just buy a license. It's a total albatross that I keep around essentially so that I can open my old designs. New designs? They're in KiCAD now. While I really don't love KiCAD, no one's going to pull the rug out from under me. I can share designs with clients & colleagues and they can open them and work with them. 10 years from now I'll be able to, worst case scenario, run Ubuntu 20.04 in a VM with KiCAD 7 and open the designs (that's assuming KiCAD 37 in 2034 doesn't still have backwards compatibility support :)). Cloud-based ECAD scares me even more. A year or two ago I needed to debug an issue with a super old design for a client. The schematic and board layouts were done in Protel 99SE (Altium Designer before it became Altium). I installed it, opened the design no problem, and extracted the info I needed. Will JITX still be around in 25 years? If they go out of business... what happens to all of my designs? Exporting to PDF and Gerbers is an OK step but doesn't help me at all if I need to actually interact with the design. A crowded market is great for downward pressure on price, but it's really not great for companies to survive long-term in a relatively small niche market.
- kelvie 3y agoPerhaps related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39263854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39263854 ? Or to save a click: https://github.com/atopile/atopile https://github.com/atopile/atopile I'm a hobbyist PCB designer, and a hobbyist (and generally happy) openSCAD user, with the BOSL2 library, and a hobbyist ESPHome user and I would really love some code alternative to KiCad. It also sounds like maybe I have too many hobbies.
- stavros 3y agoThat's not nearly enough hobbies. Try making/flying RC planes/drones, it's super fun and neatly combines with your other hobbies.
- midnightclubbed 3y agoThis looks interesting, as a hobbyist with a EEE background and a programming career I like the idea of designing circuits using code. But maybe I'm not the target audience here... pricing seems high for anyone who is not using this commercially (and at scale). $1000 per month (or $60 a day, which I don't really understand the utility of).
- Zamiel_Snawley 3y agoTheir yearly option is only 18% off too, at $9,804.
- jrmcauliffe 3y agoSigh, remembers when Visual Age for Java was $10k a seat in 2000 $$$.
- DHaldane 3y agoWe are certainly focused on the professional market for monetization -- turns out this software is hard to build and we need to pay smart people to work on it. Not to say we won't have an open free/freemium offering soon. Hobbyists needed the new layout tool we just shipped last Tuesday, so it's much closer now.
- wrs 3y agoThe pricing page does list a free educational (“and open source”) offering. The application form only talks about educational, though. Can you say more about what that is?
- DHaldane 3y agoGood catch - we can add some clarification to that form. Today JITX is for professional EEs mainly, and we don't have a lot of resources to help people learn electronics from scratch. (Still want to help the students though - this company was inspired by my grad school robotics struggles). However a code-based approach boosts reusability enough make open-source hardware a whole lot more meaningful. So we selectively grant access to people able to use the tool effectively today who are also going to contribute to open source. Overall, we're opening up more and more as the tech moves from special purpose to general purpose.
- Zamiel_Snawley 3y agoCommercial license is $1000/month. How does that compare to other EDA software?
- mattofak 3y agoAltium is about $10k to start and then $2.5k ~ 3.5k per year depending on plan.
- bb88 3y agoMy favorite is the hobbyist youtube videos sponsored by Altium. Just pay 10k plus 2/3k per year afterwards and you too can design boards like I can! (/s) But the reality is I unsubscribed from those creators, because I never want to see someone design a board in Altium, I want to see how they build a board using kicad. From the software side, I really like the license model of the all products pack from JetBrains. And it goes with me wherever I go.
- jrmcauliffe 3y agoYeah, I love the fact that Jetbrains 'everything' is actually affordable by a solo software engineer and you can just 'bring your own tools' to a job.
- spacedcowboy 3y agoAltium is sufficiently good [1] though that for a personal license, you don't really need the yearly updates (which are mainly focused on their core business of large companies anyway). Source: bought permanent license, haven't update it. [1] for example it has a built-in field solver for diff-pair impedance, not the approximations that vary from online tool to online tool
- fxtentacle 3y agoKiCad is free and has a great community, which means lots of projects to download.
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- cushychicken 3y agoI have to give JITX credit - every time I see their latest product offering, it gets closer to something I’d actually use. (Working EE who primarily does board and system design.) These layout automations they show in the landing page are the first thing they’ve showcased that I’m intrigued enough to want to try for myself. The thing I wonder about with all of these EDA companies is whether any of them understand that they’re not attacking the biggest problem of circuit design. Capturing the SCH/PCB is a relatively small part of the process of getting a working design ready to sell. Less than ten percent of the time, I’d guess. The bulk goes in to design documentation, testing, certification, compliance, and DFM/DFA. A part of me sort of hates to see these companies do their thing, because it’s making the fun part of the job shorter and faster.
- DHaldane 3y agoThanks! We're working hard -- I just added that animation this morning and I have a few more to do. I like your perspective on tackling the biggest problem. We can show a lot more of how users have been doing automation for firmware, docs, testing, etc ... An underrated part of an autorouter is that you can enforce rules for DFM (and SI) automatically, so some of that tougher stuff is addressable with the right approach. Including a lot of compliance. Certainly not trying to shrink the fun part - tried to make layout more of an optimization tool than a drafting tool. Although "I should not be doing this" is a mentality a lot of EEs bring to layout.
- cushychicken 3y agoI like your perspective on tackling the biggest problem I’d be happy to generate some additional perspectives on your tool if there’s a way I can try it without spending $10k or going back to college for an .edu email address XD An underrated part of an autorouter is that you can enforce rules for DFM (and SI) automatically, so some of that tougher stuff is addressable with the right approach. Including a lot of compliance. You must be referring to an autorouter tool I’ve never tried. (Maybe your own?) All the ones I’ve ever seen produce trace fanouts that look like regurgitated spaghetti. "I should not be doing this" is a mentality a lot of EEs bring to layout. Probably explains why so many EEs struggle to get their designs to pass radiated emissions compliance tests. Layout is still circuit design: you just don’t know any of the component values you’re dealing with. Gotta learn to make good choices once you understand how board parasitics work. Unrelated - I’m pretty sure I spoke with you or one of your cofounders about your product in comments when you first launched. I asked you about emissions compliance and I think DDR trace matching and routing in a comment thread. Glad to see you got at least one of those problems licked.
- dr_kiszonka 3y ago(Apologies for my plebeian question to all EEs here.) Is there software that would tell me what I need to buy to make this [Arduino QT Py] work with [this specific set of 200 IC LEDs]? Alternatively, how can I check if a specific combination of components would work together? I spent a few hours with Flux and EasyEDA, but didn't get far.
- namibj 3y agoI suggest a thorough discussion with GPT-4, based on datasheet information of the given parts, to talk through options for interfacing and then attempting to flesh them out and find concrete parts.
- nine_k 3y agoI'd rather ask at a specific forum, e.g. https://electronics.stackexchange.com/ https://electronics.stackexchange.com/
- rock_hard 3y agoYou are in luck Flux.ai does that…have a look at this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y56AqPOjp0k&t=366s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y56AqPOjp0k&t=366s Flux Copilot will happily assist you going from an idea to selecting the right components all the way to manufactured board!
- dr_kiszonka 3y agoThanks! I replied to your colleague's comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39783812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39783812
- markwu2001 3y agoHey! I can't see your links to the LEDs or the QT Py, but I'm assuming they're probably neopixels as you mentioned "IC" LEDs. Drag your parts into flux and just ask copilot how to connect them together properly. Just to speculate on your project, you probably want some sort of gate buffer for the neopixel signal. And just ensure whatever power source you are using (be it a 5V source or a battery or buck boost converter) can handle the total current draw of those LEDs. I believe they have a wide operating voltage, but also just double check that if you are using a constant voltage source (which you probably are), it isn't over the maximum forward voltage of the LEDs. You can ask in detail with copilot by the way! Just wanted to echo some more resources to get you oriented. The second video shows actual examples of how to leverage copilot in your exact scenario. Flux End to End tutorial: https://youtu.be/Nz-XvvlozK4 https://youtu.be/Nz-XvvlozK4 AI Architecture Exploration: https://youtu.be/iGJOzVf0o7o https://youtu.be/iGJOzVf0o7o
- spacedcowboy 3y agoYeah, looks awesome but as someone who forked out for a permanent Altium license for myself, there's no way I'm paying $1k/month for it ....
- m-hilgendorf 3y agoAs a former employee (2019-2021) it's heartwarming to see the comments shift from where they were five years ago to where they are today. The idea was proven out! Keep up the excellent work, seeing the autorouter come to fruition and demoed on the homepage is a massive accomplishment and mind blowing.
- DHaldane 3y agoThanks Mike! We're still in VSCode -- thank you for kicking off that very first extension.
- wkoszek 3y agoGreat work! I really hope that you guys end up having a ton of industry interest. Really see JITX being a positive addition to the whole EDA toolchain. I remember several efforts from within the industry where even during copy&paste from reference designs, the mistakes were made and the PCB batch was ending in a trash. Once the library of snippets gets beefy, and people can build boards with their Raspberry Pis and Zeros on them, it'll be a critical mass. Good luck!
- ipsum2 3y agoIt's interesting that OpenAI is listed, presumably as a customer. Wonder what chips they're making? Probably not GPUs/TPUs, but maybe a data collection unit or consumer board?
- matthewfelgate 3y agoThis looks amazing.
- ShuffleBoard 3y agoAIUI JITX has potential to serve non-mainstream markets, including hobbyists, in ways that people aren't really imagining at this point. Unfortunately for them, though, the mainstream market, along with all of the incumbents, is where the $$ is that would fund non-mainstream support. If the prime rate was still ~0% you might see a strategy out of JITX wherein they'd first take some spectacular swings for the fences in smaller markets. Those kind of successes would make quite the splash here. But now they've got to go fight it out for the enterprise seats, and, for a half-dozen reasons, post-haste. If they can manage that successfully, I expect they'll soon also be able to do great things for hobbyists, on hobbyist budgets.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoHobbiest friendly with a $1k per month license the second you want to sell something? Ok, disagree though.
- DHaldane 3y agoHey - you got this very correct. Good insights as to what we're up to. Grueling to build product for the pros, but once done it can support a lot of people. Good automation can dissolve false dichotomies.
- dangoodmanUT 3y agoI nearly passed out when I saw the intensely squiggly traces
- ekimehtor 3y agoI've been out of this industry for a while now so my thoughts may be a bit dated but it seems to me that the current trend is components suppliers and board manufactures are offering design solutions has it value added resource to there customers. E.g. Element 14 or seeds studio. And down
- mips_r4300i 3y agoGood idea and concept. I fully support the idea. Being able to specify a generic part requirement instead of hunting for a specific part is nice sometimes, but any company that makes more than a couple boards already has this covered with a bom management system. Adding parts via text is nice and fast, but also glosses over many aspects of the part. Say I use a Diodes Inc buck regulator. It has a valid input voltage range it will accept. It has multiple ways it can be wired depending on the application. Wire for buck, septic, etc. PFM on/auto/off, etc. I don't see control over details like that. Your About Us page is longer and more extensive than your actual product example page. I see 4-5 very basic designs that I could bang out in Altium in under a day each. Are you selling to people unable to make PCBs? I look for ways to save time because I wear many hats in my job, only 1 of which is doing a board. However, I would not be able to save any time using this tool, because it would produce an inferior result. Additionally, after only 8 months of paying for this product, someone can already afford a full Altium license. I want to save time on stuff like breaking out and pin swapping IO on a large FPGA. Handle DDR3 routing for me. These are things that actually take time, because you need to understand the device and read through tons of PDFs. However, I think that might also be the most difficult part to add to your product. Finally, how does it handle physical constraints like non- square board outlines, mounting hole placement, and 3d STEP integration?
- DHaldane 3y agoGood set of questions, and thanks for the feedback. Currently updating the website to add this stuff. Comments/answers to questions in order: 1. Yes, finding a single resistor is easy. Part solving is more about making parametric circuits possible. (like a buck regulator that can configure itself on SS, output voltage). There you need to calculate values from parameters and then go find a part you can actually buy. Doing that manually is less magical of an experience. 2. Yes - some example code here (have not documented yet, apologies) https://github.com/JITx-Inc/jitx-cookbook/blob/main/regulator_example/main.stanza https://github.com/JITx-Inc/jitx-cookbook/blob/main/regulato... 3. Our customers are professional EEs doing really complex work (e.g. many 30Ghz SERDES), and our website is drastically out of date. Will update design on site soon - this post was some guy submitting our landing page to HN. I'm trying to keep up! 4. Yes, this works already. Was very hard to do on the product side, design code was relatively simple. DDR3 example here - https://youtu.be/bw4KxhV-d8g https://youtu.be/bw4KxhV-d8g 5. Physical constraints are imported or generated - works quite well to automatically sync electromechanicals. Mutliple 3D models including STEP can be added to parts, again I need to update the website.
- darksaints 3y agoI'm curious here...I've only ever gotten deep enough into pcb design to modify an open source motor controller. What does this give you that I couldn't get out of KiCad? From what I can tell, there are autorouters and autolayout and design rule checks. Is it just better execution?
- Karliss 3y agoI just noticed if you click "start trial" it will automatically add 1 $1000 license to cart. Really? Doing classic hidden subscription dark patterns for a $1000/month software. It's already shitty thing to do for a $15 streaming services, but for something like this I would expect a more professional attitude.
- macleodan 3y agoYour signup and contact forms are broken and tell me 405 not allowed.