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A circuit and PCB editor in the browser
- stephengillie 14y agoNot to trample on copyright or patent, but it's "visio-style" in-browser circuit drawing. And it's fast. This might not be good for designing your next motherboard, but it's great for hobbyists! I'm excited to try modeling an MCH430 on here.
- notimpotent 14y agoKind of simplistic. I much prefer http://www.dz863.com/index.php http://www.dz863.com/index.php
- benschrauwen 14y agoThis is really the first version of the editor and we are working on several more features. But a big design goal for us is actually to make it as simple as possible to design electronics. We believe that a lot more people could be designing electronics if the tools were simpler and if you could easily build on existing electronics modules, just like what happens when building software. This is at the heart of circuits.io
- notimpotent 14y agoI gotcha. It's a good start then. I'll definitely keep an eye on it. A couple suggestions: have an option to turn on a grid in the background. Also would be nice to be able to rotate components.
- kruffin 14y agoFrom the help button in the top right, it looks like you can rotate and flip the components. (To GP)It definitely wasn't the easiest to find, maybe have a tutorial video showing how you are doing some of the things like rotating and moving traces to the bottom layer in the main video? Looks pretty good so far though; I might give it a try later with a board I've made before. [Edit] A grid would be killer too; great suggestion. [Final Edit] Tooltips on the components/actions would help your goal of making electronic design simpler/easier to do. Selecting: Hold down shift and left click elements. Box select: Hold down shift and drag a box around the elements to be selected. Deselect All: Left click on the canvas. Move Element: Just drag it. Connect Terminals: Drag from schematic terminal to other schematic terminal. Disconnect Terminal: Left click terminal. Click 'X' . Rotate Element: Select element and push 'r'. Remove Element: Select element and push 'del'. Flip Element Horizontally: Select element and push 'h' Flip Element Vertically: Select element and push 'v'
- kbruneel 14y agoThanks for the help!:) I totally agree that we need tutorials and videos. Sorry about that! Definitely contact us if you have any trouble.
- superasn 14y agoHi, I have only very basic knowledge of electronics but I was still very much impressed by your software. I cannot suggest improvements on the electronics side but being an online marketer, I wanted to give you some tips for marketing, in case you find them useful. 1) You need to make the final output embeddable, like slideshare, so that people who are creating schematics using your software are able to put it on their blogs and website 2) The embedded version can have a link back to your site, e.g. "Modify this circuit" or better "Run this circuit" so that you get backlinks and the visitors can interact and come to your site. 3) You are 100% correct with the "try it now" button, but instead of redirecting them to a signup page, try using a modal popup over the circuit. I'm sure you'll see a good increase in signups with a split test. 4) You can also create a shareable URL (like tinyurl) where even without signing up a person can send that URL to a friend or post it on twitter/facebook. This will get you even more traffic / backlinks. Just a few things on the top of my mind.
- whyleyc 14y agoNice constructive feedback from an anonymous account. How about telling the guys what you'd like to see to improve the service ?
- jacquesm 14y agoHe gave a link and said he thought it was simplistic. Comparing the linked product with the product in the article would be a good start. The fact that he/she is anonymous does not make this invalid feedback, just like the fact that you are anonymous yourself does not make your comments invalid.
- andredieb 14y agoCongrats on the project! It's really interesting to see electrical engineering tools using web and modern concepts instead of the usual the nasty-windows-only-IDE packaging.
- kbruneel 14y agoWord up! ;)
- Adirael 14y agoI like to build guitar effects and this is awesome.
- kbruneel 14y agoThanx!
- helper 14y agoI would love to ditch Eagle PCB for a tool like this. Eagle is awesome, but as a hobbyist I don't use 70% of its features. From a quick look at circuits.io here's what I would want in order to make the switch: 1) Let me import my Eagle components 2) Give me more control over grid sizing 3) Autorouter! I'm also interested in seeing the fabrication prices. Right now I use batchpcb.com (a Sparkfun service). There really aren't any other good options for printing a single PCB.
- kbruneel 14y agoWe are currently working hard at integrating with the octopart api. We aim at building a huge crowd sourced component lib, so you will never have to enter components again. Grid and measurements are definitely on top of the list. Autorouter is a bit lower, but want that. We will probably first do some form of assisted routing. At this point you can download your gerber files and send them to a manufacturer of your choice, but we are working on integrating with services like BatchPCB.
- rrmm 14y agoI've never found autorouters to be all that useful. I've always found their results awkward at best. I also find routing by hand to be sort of relaxing.
- zaius 14y agoAssisted routing would be way more useful (and probably easier to implement) than autorouting. Also, it would be great to have a versioning system that could pull together the good bits from different attempts at routing.
- decktech 14y agoCheck out Advanced Circuits, they have a barebones PCB service that isn't too expensive for ordering test boards and one-offs. Turnaround is one day plus shipping. And they send you popcorn with your order for some reason. http://www.4pcb.com/barebones-pcbs.html http://www.4pcb.com/barebones-pcbs.html
- rrmm 14y ago
- throwaway1979 14y agoLooks awesome! I have a quick question about PCB layout. In the video, when you switch from the schematic to the PCB layout view, there are thin lines which are clicked to become red. There is a final line that is clicked to become blue. Can you explain what is going on there? FYI: I'm a CS person who is learning about electronics and circuits. I started building radio and op-amp circuits, and have read that prototyping on breadboard doesn't work well. I tried going from schematic to directly soldering on a perf board and it ended in disaster. This tool seems exactly what I need ... though I could use it to figure out my perf board layout.
- mustate 14y agoIt looks like these are two layer boards, meaning you can route traces either on the top (red line) or the bottom (blue line) of the board. have read that prototyping on breadboard doesn't work well. That's definitely not my experience. Using a solderless breadboard may add more noise, but it's much easier to assemble and correct mistakes.
- mbell 14y ago> Using a solderless breadboard may add more noise, but it's much easier to assemble and correct mistakes. Noise isn't usually the major problem with breadboards, though it is an issue. The much more troubling issue and what makes breadboards useless for a large number of circuits are the parasitics from the connections. The stray capacitance and inductance can cause large problems and even outright oscillation of even relatively low frequency circuits.
- mustate 14y agoGood point, thanks for the correction. I recalled assembling RF and other analog circuits using breadboards in labs, but those were likely too low frequency to run into those problems.
- throwaway1979 14y ago
- austinlyons 14y agoany plans to get this in use by any high school or college courses? Could you create a Udacity/Coursera "EE 101" course that uses circuit.io?
- kbruneel 14y agoNot at this point, but the app is free to use for everybody. :) We plan to create some interactive and "game like" tutorials in the future, which should make it fun and easy to learn to design PCBs.
- RobotCaleb 14y agoI am not a hardware guy. Other than playing with n-in-one electronics kits as a kid I haven't ever touched it much. I recently needed to build a "sensor pod" (my name) for my ongoing 6-camera high altitude balloon project. I got everything working on a breadboard and needed to move it to a more permanent PCB. Enter Fritzing[0]. I fell in love with Fritzing pretty quickly. It has 3 mode. Breadboard, schematic, PCB. I was able to copy my physical breadboard layout over to the virtual one. From that, it basically gave me a schematic (what I wanted) and a PCB layout (not entirely useful for me). I had to touch up the routing and fix some lines that wanted to connect VCC straight to GND. I was able to figure it out pretty readily and fix it all and now have a working PCB[1]. All this is to say, if you're a noob, Fritzing is great. This (circuits.io) is probably geared at non-noobs, and I'm sure it's fine for them. I am not quite able to jump right into drawing a schematic, though. As such, I can't provide much of an opinion on it. :) [0] http://fritzing.org/ http://fritzing.org/ [1] http://goo.gl/iWuZF http://goo.gl/iWuZF
- rabidsnail 14y agoNeat! Do you guys plan on adding a plugin api so people can write simulators and auto-routers and such?
- kbruneel 14y agoCool idea! Thats something we will look at in the future.
- rabidsnail 14y agoImagine what kinds of tools you could write if you had a giant corpus of schematics and edit histories. "Find a path through the graph of existing parts to wire these parts together" would be one example.
- sauce71 14y agoI have just picked up electronics again after a hiatus, need to create some simple boards. Will try this. If it works and gets momentum,it will really be great!
- caster_cp 14y agoAbsolutely fantastic! I'm having problems trying to fork a circuit, though (rails' something went wrong message of doom). But this is definetly something I would love to use and see working. Kudos!
- kbruneel 14y agoSorry that was a bug. It's fixed now.
- julien_c 14y agoWhat's the difference/how is it positioned compared to Upverter (http://upverter.com http://upverter.com)?
- mustate 14y agoUpverter has a nicer schematic editor and more social features, but doesn't have any PCB layout capabilities (at this time, at least.)
- benschrauwen 14y agoWe have PCB layout (with Gerber export, which actually passes all BatchPCB or Eurocircuit DRC checks) and allow other circuits to be included as modules. I think this is a major difference as you can actually design something and have it fabricated. And the modular design flow allows you to "stand on the shoulders of giants". With the right modules, you don't need to be an expert anymore to design electronics.
- theatrus2 14y agoAs far as I can tell, this doesn't yet support floods/pours. I know the target market wouldn't use them at the get go, and they are somewhat tricky to implement, but an essential feature IMO. However, I love the module concept! Perfect way to combine open source hardware designs together!
- kbruneel 14y agoI totally agree! Floods are certainly on top of the list. You can expect them one of these days!
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoFloods would be great because it saves chemicals and time when doing single and double sided boards at home. (Don't have to etch away so much copper.)
- octernion 14y agoI love this. Sadly, forking (without logging in) seems to throw up a rails error screen instead of prompting me to log in. Great work, though.
- benschrauwen 14y agoGood catch, fixing that now
- kbruneel 14y agoThats fixed now. Thanks for the notice!
- zxcvvcxz 14y agoGreat project, runs very smoothly in the browser. What graphics library/API (javascript/html5) did you use to build it?
- iwwr 14y agoStill primitive compared to this http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ http://www.falstad.com/circuit/
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoFalstad is for simple simulation. Not PCB layout.
- zobzu 14y agoyay another "chrome only" site.
- benschrauwen 14y agoAlso works on Safari, on Firefox there are just some minor glitches. Just didn't have the time yet for thorough cross browser testing and tuning
- threedaymonk 14y agoWhilst I sympathise, "Chrome only" is already more widely available than a Windows or OS X or Linux program would be. The world of electronics is full of software that only runs on Windows. Having to install a free cross-platform browser is already an improvement.
- zobzu 14y agoYeah but that doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. I'm personally for actual standards, so all browsers play by the same rule. Not you must use company X's product, no matter how good it is. Because once they'll get 99% of the market, they'll trash it in the name of profit. It's inevitable. That's why i don't like "chrome only".
- sauce71 14y agoTried it for a few minutes. What is missing and should only take a few minutes to add are generic dips, more generic headers and generic soics. Without I'm stranded before I even get to start as the component library are limited and there is no way to add on your own.
- benschrauwen 14y agoYou can add you own components at the bottom of your dashboard. The process is currently still a bit tedious, but we will have a massively easier flow earlier next week. For this we will integrate with Octopart and have a large number of standard footprints.
- sauce71 14y agoSounds great. I will try it a bit more. Subscribed to the mailing list. Hope this will be a sucssess for you. Btw. I think the number of parts you see when searching could be increased.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoE-gads that thing is as frustrating as any other PCB layout software. More-so than many. It's a shame because Good PCB layout software is so badly needed.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago1. Ctrl-R, a common shortcut to rotate a component, it's like second nature. Unfortunately, it means something different in a browser. Argh. 2. Don't click "save" unless you mean it. Oops. You just lost your work. Those were minor complaints, these are not. 3. Searching through the components. You must let us see what we're browsing through. You must also let us filter. 4. PCB - How do I scatter components? Or must I pluck them out one at a time? 5. No Test Point footprint! Why does nobody use test points? 6. I know someone already said grid, but, grid. I know you like your nice clean simple no-clutter UI, but put the help text on the screen, in the margins or something. You can make it optional.
- lallouz 14y agoAwesome job, way to go Karel and co.
- kbruneel 14y agoThanx!
- tomkinstinch 14y agoI like the ambition of this, and it has the potential to grow into something both useful and cash flow positive. Having a community of open schematics and layouts will be wonderful. Does the layout editor support design rule settings/verification--things like clearance around traces and vias, via diameter, etc.? An awesome feature would be a way to pull up a datasheet for a part by clicking on it in either the schematic or layout views. When I work on a project, I usually keep a paper binder of datasheets for quick reference. Having everything one or two clicks away would be great. Using the Octopart API to build a BOM broken down by best vendor, per-part, would be cool too. It wasn't clear when I tried using the site: Will it give me gerber files I can send to a fab? What about a completed board rendering a la OSH Park[1]? Any plans to support components/footprints/libraries/whatever you want to call them from KiCAD or Eagle? Orcad? Altium? Any plans to hook up with a fab, and panelize orders to optimize for low cost boards? 1. http://oshpark.com/ http://oshpark.com/
- kbruneel 14y agoCan you read our minds? :) I'm now working hard at integrating with octopart and pulling up the datasheet for a part is already in there, but there is a lot more ... Next thing on the list is DRC. We already have the algorithms in place, so its basically down to doing the visualization. You can expect that soon! You can easily download your gerber files. Just click "make" and then "download". We have plans to build the largest shared component library in the world. Soon! We are also currently working on hooking up to a fab and panelizing is certainly part of that. We want you to order a board with one click and receive it in the mail just a few days later. And all that at a good price! Thanks!
- nuriaion 14y agoHi I really like the idea of circuits.io. Here some things i noticed during a short test. (Probably you already know all these things) Some kind of an "Push Obstacle" Layout mode would be nice. (Move the obstacles when you try to lay down an wire) Or at least a "Walk around Obstacle". Have an adjustable keymapping. (i prefere to have zoom on "A" + "D", pan on "W", start routing on "S" etc. ) I wasn't able to change the layer (| is Alt+7 for me which your app doesn't seem to recognize) Add more layer and Polygons/Planes. (Our standart pcb has 4 Layers. GND, VCC, 2 times routing) The device search is just lame. It would be nice to be able to edit a project as a team. (Have a history of changes and who made this changes, add a possible to review the changes, etc.)
- stevewilhelm 14y agoIf you are a student, you can get academic access to state of the art circuit design tools from Cadence Design http://www.cadence.com/support/university/pages/default.aspx http://www.cadence.com/support/university/pages/default.aspx
- benschrauwen 14y agoCan you still open your own designs when you stop being a student?
- srlake 14y agoThis looks like a great start! I do a lot of electronics design. I've used ORCad, PADS, Altium, EAGLE, DIPtrace, and so on and have never really found a package I really love. I currently use EAGLE for capture and PCB design, and do simulations in a PSPICE package outside of Eagle. This is a crappy solution, but it's the best cost/performance/simplicity tradeoff I've been able to come up with. What type of Library features are you expecting? That's a major pain point with Eagle (Libraries are crap). If you're able to nail-down the collaboration, libraries, and version control features I'd certainly be up for switching our team over. Would love to provide further input if you guys are interested. Shoot me an email if so: stephen at stephenlake.ca
- srlake 14y agoPS - what is "circuithub.com" building? Is it a competitor to what you guys are working on? Excited that we're seeing some development in this area.