[HN Gopher] A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was ma...
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A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
Author : malerba118
Score : 853 points
Date : 2022-12-14 21:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.withdiode.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.withdiode.com)
| ralusek wrote:
| Pretty awesome, thanks for building this.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Skeuomorphism? No thanks. I'd rather keep the circuit plan clear.
| duke360 wrote:
| WHAAAATT??
| nchudleigh wrote:
| Super cool.
| Archit3ch wrote:
| No automatic differentiation, no multiphysics, no symbolic
| reduction, no modern solvers, no GPU support for simulation, no
| parts library.
|
| Other than the UI, this looks closer to 2003 than 2022.
| gnramires wrote:
| There's a similar product at https://wokwi.com/ (with an open
| source core)
|
| It's actually really useful, fast, educational. Highly
| recommended.
|
| I also wish someone would revitalize falstad circuit sim
| (http://falstad.com/circuit/), which is still I think the best
| tool for experimentation with analog electronics. Just a little
| bit better interface and user friendliness and it would be
| amazing!
|
| A somewhat more robust numerical backend (that can give error
| guarantees) would also be nice, you kind of have to tinker with
| time steps in some cases.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Wokwi is an awesome tool! We're actually using wokwi's open-
| sourced avr simulator to power arduinos in diode.
|
| One thing wokwi doesn't do however is analog simulation so
| we're hoping to combine spice simulations with arduino, rpi,
| esp32, etc.
| gnramires wrote:
| Indeed, mixed signal simulations would be very useful, I
| reckon, for people dealing with sensors and that kind of
| stuff. Might as well simulate it before building it. It's
| currently possible with falstad's open source code base as
| well, you just have to program inputs and outputs but it's
| not very ergonomical let's put it that way.
|
| In any case, I always encourage trying to be as open as you
| can with the software, this encourages
| collaboration/cooperation (and of course is just better for
| everyone, in most cases!).
|
| I think (like others here) any slightly more advanced user
| would be more comfortable/productive in a 2D interface most
| of the time. But the option of having 3D for blinkenlights is
| sure nice :)
|
| (also a great accessibility for people who can't afford to
| buy hardware for learning and experimentation but have access
| to a computer)
| alphabetter wrote:
| I did the port of Paul's sim so that it runs natively in the
| browser instead of needing a Java plug-in (remember them) and
| made various other contributions.
|
| I haven't contributed for a couple of years, but Paul still
| actively maintains it.
|
| Do you have specific ideas on what would be changed to
| "revitalize" it? I agree the UI is kind of basic (it could do
| with a pallet of common components), but I still like the
| productivity of it.
| MexicanJoe wrote:
| I wish I understood electronics
| ur-whale wrote:
| Here is a _really_ nice resource to get started:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@simplyput2796/videos
| jpoesen wrote:
| You're in luck, friend. On the interweb you can learn anything,
| free of charge.
|
| Case in point: https://www.tinkercad.com/circuits
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| please take the smoothing out. The smoothing of camera rotation,
| the smoothing of leds changing state... so annoying you cant try
| things like quickly pressing button or such
| benreesman wrote:
| Perhaps peripheral (the original site has been hugged to death).
|
| Both clashlang: https://clash-lang.org/
|
| And Hardcaml: https://github.com/janestreet/hardcaml
|
| have personally fueled my interest in hardware.
|
| Dan Luu speaks eloquently and at length about how better options
| are needed for logic design. I would recommend both of the above
| to the enthusiastic novice.
| RektBoy wrote:
| Sorry, but this website is useless and clunky. I will stick to
| circuit simulator which looks like it was made in 2003. Anyway,
| thanks
| atoav wrote:
| As someone who teaches electronics to people who are purely into
| it for the practical parts (artists) I think one of the main
| beginner challenges in electronics is the _translation_ between
| the different representations of a circuit.
|
| Going from a schematic to a breadboard, going from a breadboard
| to a stripboard or from a schematic to the actual PCB/IC is hard
| if you never have done it. It is like showing someone who has
| never seen written language a book and trying to make them
| understand that the signs map to spoken language somehow.
|
| Groking that takes some time.
|
| For that matter I think choosing the breadboarded representation
| of a circuit (in 3D!) for a simulation program is not really a
| good choice. For beginners it might _seem_ like a good choice,
| but it prevents them from becoming accustomed to the schematics
| they will encounter everywhere. For more advanced people it is
| too clunky (schematics just _are_ superiour for reasoning about
| circuits).
|
| So far the best and most usable simulator I have come across is
| circuit.js by Paul Falstad. It has some circuits where the
| simulated circuit does not match reality at all (e.g. a CMOS-
| Inverter based relaxation oscillator), but it is extremely
| usable.
| xattt wrote:
| The best tool I ever used to learn about circuits was a Radio
| Shack electronics kit. It was something I could pick away at
| for years as kid, and eventually develop an intuitive sense for
| reading a schematic.
|
| I believe that Elenco continues to make a version of it:
| https://shop.elenco.com/consumers/electronic-playground-130....
| lbriner wrote:
| Completely agree. This was my first practical kit. I bought
| one recently from John Lewis in the UK and they are very
| under-rated. A few $ worth of components but most
| importantly, a neat paper booklet with a tonne of example
| circuits including how to wire them on the spring posts.
|
| I would always recommend this as a start for young children
| before then going back to some theory and "why did this
| circuit behave this way"
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Schematics are for _understanding_ what a circuit does.
|
| Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits.
|
| Veroboard is for prototyping larger medium-speed circuits.
|
| Gerbers & a PCB are for production and for prototyping large or
| high-speed circuits.
|
| If the tool could automatically make a 3D breadboard view from a
| schematic, it'd be pretty neat for beginners. If the tool warned
| you when the normal parasitic capacitance between breadboard rows
| would cause problems with a part you're using, that'd be
| _amazing_ for teaching.
| xxs wrote:
| >Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits.
|
| Reminds me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR9TweWf3w8 Sine
| oscillator (no ICs), 10K load, 24+GHz on a breadboard.
| thewileyone wrote:
| "parasitic capacitance" ... I shudder recalling the nights
| wasted in the analog lab due to this.
| nomel wrote:
| Maybe a checkbox to "show parasitic components".
| kurthr wrote:
| Exactly! Allow idealized networks, but also insert reasonably
| sized/modeled parasitics to be inserted so you can see why
| your beautiful plan isn't really.
|
| That's not just capacitances! At speed the resistance of a
| long trace or the inductance to a neighbor are big deals.
| Meanwhile the internal PCB planes of Power/Gnd are necessary
| low impedance bypass that no packaged cap could provide.
| analog31 wrote:
| This is a tangent, but having worked with digital circuits for
| 40 years, the improvements in chips have made circuit
| construction -- even breadboarding -- vastly more forgiving
| than ever before. I've run 10 MHz clocks on breadboards and 100
| MHz SPI bus on 2 layer boards that were not designed with
| extreme care. And, it's a fast precision ADC that's meeting its
| datasheet specs on that board.
|
| No doubt the parasitics and other nasties still come into play,
| but it's still amazing how much faster we can go before they
| start to bite.
| alar44 wrote:
| I've been doing multi chip stuff with 16MHz Atmels with no
| issues just using a de-coupleing cap on the Vins. Did it not
| used to be that easy?
| relaxing wrote:
| You say multi chip, but what are the signals going between
| chips?
|
| Imagine all the peripherals baked into your uc were
| separate DIPs, and you had to worry about high speed
| signals going everywhere.
|
| And yeah, all the parts were less robust and hadn't evolved
| to be tolerant of less than perfect conditions.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| That's been a funny thing for me. I'm not an electrical
| engineer, at all. My electrical knowledge is an introductory
| electromagnetics course I had to take in college that I've
| mostly forgotten, reading/watching EEVblog, other internet
| sources, playing around with cheap and/or old parts, reading
| whatever I can find, etc.
|
| I've made some retrocomputing boards (<= 50 MHz) (8051, 286,
| 68010, 68030, etc.) and haven't had much of a problem. No
| idea what the EMI looks like though. Greatest goof I had so
| far was an old part who's datasheet didn't mention that the
| signal output was open collector so I had to bodge a resistor
| in. Mostly just followed advice I found on the internet -> 4
| layer boards can be had for very cheap these days (JLCPCB
| does 10 for $30 w/ ENIG boards up to 10cm x 10cm), so I
| followed the "just do yourself a favor and get the 4 layers
| boards so you can make ground and power planes" advice. Used
| a tool to compute minimum trace spacing to stay under a
| certain capacitance for a specific copper weight, board
| thickness, dielectric type, etc.
|
| Probably my crowning achievement at this point is making an
| 1.8V LVDS to TMDS level shifter board so I can get HDMI 1.2a
| (4x 1.65 Gbps lanes + sidebands) out of an FPGA board I
| repurposed from some cryptomining hardware I bought on eBay.
| Had to learn how to do soldering using a stencil, paste, hot
| air station, and a hotplate because no one is hand soldering
| 0.4mm QFN packages. 0402 are the smallest thing I can do by
| hand.
|
| Next thing I want to try is breaking out a small BGA. Managed
| to get a few Lattice iCE40HX8K's in the CT256 package (256
| balls @ 0.8mm pitch BGA).
|
| What hurts is how patent/royalty/industry interest group
| encumbered that nearly everything modern is. Want to do PCIe?
| Join PCIe SIG. Want to do USB? Join USB-IF. Want to support
| SD cards? Pay a bunch to SDA. Actually their patents expired
| so maybe you can do native SD mode now without much fear.
| HDMI is awful, DisplayPort requires you to join VESA, MIPI
| for CSI and DSI devices, etc.
| phlipski wrote:
| "Want to do PCIe? Join PCIe SIG. Want to do USB? Join USB-
| IF..."
|
| As someone who works for a large silicon vendor I can tell
| you that even with access to those industry groups the
| documentation still sucks!!!! I look at the amazing
| documentation available surrounding various software
| initiatives (OpenCV, machine learning, linux drivers,
| programming languages, etc...) with envy. It's all right
| there and out in the open with multiple blogs and forums
| and pages explaining shit. And actually I did try to learn
| PCIe. I gave up. 1000+ reference specs, about 3 random web
| pages and a half dozen marketing youtube video's. There's a
| reason why some guys manage to build niche careers around
| these HW topics!
| analog31 wrote:
| It blew my mind that the microcontroller I'm now using
| has a 1000+ page datasheet.
| repiret wrote:
| I recently came across a reference manual for an SoC that
| came in at over 24,000 pages - a new personal record. The
| tools for working with such large PDFs generally suck.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| Preview.app used to be very good for large pdfs, back in
| what I suddenly realize must be considered "the early
| days" of OS X, maybe 8 years ago.
|
| Now? Eh, Firefox. If that doesn't work, well, find an old
| Mac which hasn't been "upgraded" I guess.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| SumatraPDF works far better than Firefox for me for
| service manuals (half a gigabyte or so usually). It
| doesn't have fancy features but it's very quick to load
| and render.
| jandrese wrote:
| It seems like any PDF viewer that runs in a browser just
| can't handle big documents and often will be terribly
| slow on even medium sized ones. I always have to use
| standalone viewers to get them to load.
| synack wrote:
| Evince on Linux is by far the best program I've found for
| reading large PDFs. It's worth the trouble to setup a VM
| or WSL just to run Evince if you're not natively on
| Linux.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Another terrific option is Okular. It actually has a
| setting to reduce memory usage on large PDF files by not
| prerendering pages that are not being viewed.
| alxlaz wrote:
| Eek, Okular. The one time I resorted to downgrading a
| package in 20+ years of using Linux. A few years back,
| someone drank too much design Kool-Aid and introduced
| smooth scrolling without making it optional. That did not
| get a very good reception from everyone, as browsing
| 20,000-page reference manuals with buttery smooth
| scrolling is, literally, dizzying.
|
| I don't know if it ever got fixed. I stopped using Linux
| around the time when it was introduced, and having had to
| revert to using xpdf for browsing large PDFs like it was
| 1994 again was part of why I ragequit :-(.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I've never opened a 20,000 page document, but I've opened
| documents of several hundred pages with no noticeable
| issues. Pressing either Space or PgDown instantly moves
| the page down, no scrolling animation. The option still
| does not exist, but it seems that the feature doesn't
| exist either.
| alxlaz wrote:
| IIRC the eventual fix was to have it respect the global
| compositor settings, so if you have animation speed set
| to instant, while it does actually smooth scroll, it does
| so instantly. However, when it was introduced, it did
| not; for similar reasons (i.e. I don't like nausea), I
| had animations disabled, but Okular did its thing, and
| slowly.
|
| It took some time for it to land though and not without
| the kind of discussions that you see on the Gnome bug
| tracker. It was pretty disheartening.
| shriek wrote:
| I've never had to read a large PDFs (probably, ~400
| pages) but what's so great about Evince? Is it just speed
| or is it because of it's features?
| andoma wrote:
| One feature I really like is that if you hover over a
| link Evince previews the target of the link in a little
| box. Perfect for "see Table X on page Y"
| auxym wrote:
| Sumatra PDF on windows is very fast.
|
| I like it so much in fact that I've been looking for a
| linux alternative and haven't been satisfied yet. I will
| try evince though.
| rsav wrote:
| I've actually been using an (ancient) build of Evince for
| Windows [0] for quite some time now.
|
| [0] https://www.fosshub.com/Evince.html
| repiret wrote:
| I use Evince on Linux and PDF Expert on MacOS. They both
| do okay, but neither does search indexing, so searching
| goes irritatingly slow. Also neither support the public
| key encrypted PDFs that a certain SoC vendor likes to
| give me.
| tda wrote:
| I'd be so happy with a 24,000 page PDF, cause then at
| least you know where too look, and you can the search
| tool. I programme Siemens hardware and the docs I need
| are spread out over many tens of PDFs (of 100-1500
| pages). I haven't found a proper tool than can let me
| search and view all this documentation properly. Best I
| found is ripgrep with some PDF extension to search which
| document I need, and then use SumatraPDF for finding the
| right page... ughh
| Faf wrote:
| Use Agent Ransack (free) or better, File Locator Pro
| ($69) from Mythicsoft. Both include comprehensive PDF
| text searching. AR includes the full functionality of FLP
| as a 30 day trial. Money you'll recover many times over
| and a product you'll be using for the rest of your life.
| https://www.mythicsoft.com/
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| How about joining all the PDFs together and doing ctrl-F?
| Sounds like it could save you the grep step.
| lb1lf wrote:
| In the particular case of Siemens, they already did that
| for you.
|
| (Migrating from S7-300 PLCs to the current S7-1500 range,
| I found the complete documentation package for the 1500
| universe in one whopper of a pdf. Just north of 11,000
| pages IIRC.)
|
| I shared the OPs frustration when working on the S7-300,
| though. The docs are excellent, there's just so many of
| them...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Acrobat reader used to let you search all PDFs in a
| directory; not sure if it still lets you do that.
| ale42 wrote:
| I usually use SumatraPDF on Windows, it's super
| lightweight, fast, and can handle large documents.
| However, I never tried it with more than 1500 pages or
| so. No idea if it would survive a 24k pages PDF, would be
| a good test...
| [deleted]
| fleventynine wrote:
| > "just do yourself a favor and get the 4 layers boards so
| you can make ground and power planes"
|
| In general, you should avoid power planes on 4 layer boards
| if you can. They tend to cause a lot of trouble with return
| currents when signals jump from the top layer to the bottom
| layer through a via. Prefer using ground planes for both
| inner layers and make sure you have ground return vias near
| every signal via.
|
| https://youtu.be/kdCJxdR7L_I goes into more detail.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Thanks! I'll check it out!
| analog31 wrote:
| Yeah, joining the clubs is burdensome. I'm lucky to be in
| an industry where there's enough value-add, that we just
| pay the piper and move on. Myself, I buy that kind of stuff
| pre-integrated.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I mean, it's the same for me, I'm just on the software
| side of the company (mostly, I'd say systems because
| occasionally I have to borrow the PCIe packet analyzer to
| figure out why something isn't working).
|
| The electronics are a thing I do as a hobby and I try my
| absolute hardest to ensure work and hobby resources are
| kept separate. Electronics is sufficiently different from
| my professional role that it doesn't feel draining as a
| thing to do on the side. I'm not one of those "spend 8
| hours programming/architecting/designing at work only to
| go home and spend another 6 writing code for fun" kind of
| people. I definitely write software and learn at home
| from time to time, but the motivation for doing it on the
| side is certainly less than it was before I turned it
| into a full time job. So I tend to gravitate towards
| things that are interesting to me but not necessarily
| useful to others.
| auxym wrote:
| Listening to various Rick Hartley talks on youtube, I got the
| understanding that it was the opposite: even at slow _clock
| rates_ , modern ICs cause all sorts of signal integrity and
| EMI issues because of very fast _edge rise times_.
|
| Cannot confirm from my experience though, I don't practice
| EE, I just dabbble in electronics and never actually
| characterized SI and EMI in my creations.
| akiselev wrote:
| It also helps a lot when you get a well made breadboard from
| BusBoard [1] instead of the Aliexpress special.
|
| [1] https://www.busboard.com/
| analog31 wrote:
| I just get the ones that the EEs throw away when someone
| retires. ;-)
| guerrilla wrote:
| Fritzing can kind of make breadboards from schematics, but
| doesn't have a 3D view... which I'm fine with because why do we
| need 3D?
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _because why do we need 3D?_
|
| Teaching is much easier when the students can connect the
| abstract representation to something they can experience.
| obscurette wrote:
| I don't have a ton of experience with teaching, but some (6
| years various STEM stuff and 3 years math) and I have
| problem with this statement. It might SEEM easier at first
| glance, but this kind of interactive 3D/VR/whatever tools
| make much harder for students to climb up into more
| abstract levels. I found that it works much better than
| students can connect schematic with real (I really mean
| real) thing as early as possible.
| wellanyway wrote:
| Any recommendations for introductory level course/book?
| I'm a web dev and I know next to nothing about PCBs,
| electronics etc.
|
| Ideally I'd like to be able to open up, say tv remote,
| look at the board and have at least some idea of what the
| top left part does vs bottom right one, that sort of
| thing.
| stephen_g wrote:
| I'm not sure how valuable it would be in this case, but 3D
| visualisation of PCBs is extensively used in pro circuit
| board design. It's very easy to place something in 2D and not
| realise that something will totally clash with it. Even when
| you have the components all set up with heights and clearance
| rules, it can be things like connectors where you have
| something blocking it so the connector is technically clear
| (so passes DRC) but you can't actually plug it in because you
| have a big component in the way! The next level is then
| importing enclosures and things to make sure things fit and
| can actually be assembled.
|
| It's interesting too that there are all sorts of mistakes
| that become a bit more obvious when you look at it in 3D than
| in the 2D view.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D?
|
| James Cameron would like a word with you. Seriously though,
| 3D can show off some things that just might not be realized
| without it. Not sure of Fritzing's design abilities with
| layered PCBs, but I could imagine trying to design a layered
| board and forgetting how tall a component is. Seeing a
| component "through" the second layer could be useful
| app4soft wrote:
| Fritzing is more like _2,5D_.[0]
|
| [0] https://blog.fritzing.org/2022/06/27/Simulating-
| Circuits-wit...
| goodpoint wrote:
| If your circuit is so complex that you need a breadboard
| planner and even an fully 3D visualization you have a big
| problem and you should not be breadboarding but ordering a
| PCB.
| RektBoy wrote:
| Is this some Gen Z meme? Like if its look old, it must be bad? I
| cringed a lot on this website. Clunky AF.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| I don't think it is specific to Gen Z - it is common for any
| young people to seek novelty for the sake of novelty (and have
| bias against anything old). To some extent it is an
| implementation of explore-exploit strategy - one can try many
| different things when young and then settle on best seen things
| becoming older.
|
| The problem is that we cannot have usable GUI because GUI
| designers just cannot stop trying new things inflicting on
| everyone constant churn.
| MohammadAZ wrote:
| Great find!
| beambot wrote:
| Circuit Lab (https://www.circuitlab.com/) has been my go-to for a
| while...
| mtreis86 wrote:
| Are there any inductors or transformers? I don't see any on the
| left parts panel. I want to make an oscillator.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Not currently, but useful feedback for us!
| gumboza wrote:
| That's where the whole thing falls apart with these things
| usually. Oscillators are quite difficult to simulate because
| they require less than ideal startup conditions i.e. noise,
| voltage gradients to get going. While the SPICE engine
| underneath does support that, you can't really expect someone
| wiring up a breadboard to be completely aware of the nuances
| around simulation vs reality.
|
| This got to a point that Bob Pease of legendary analogue design
| fame, chucked a computer off a roof
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrZ_fMqd8k8
| kragen wrote:
| also if your oscillator's q is high it can take a terribly
| long time in simulation to start oscillating
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Check out
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198800/CRUMB_Circuit_Sim...
| also. Excellent UI.
| onirom wrote:
| Is there some tools like this which can simulate old school stuff
| such as magnetic core memory ?
| inglor wrote:
| Wokwi does this pretty well
| pkolaczk wrote:
| This illustrates a problem with many "modern" applications. My
| first impression: "Oh, that looks nice. Looks like in real life".
| Then I tried using it and found that it is clunky and slow to the
| point it is barely usable and I would much faster build the real
| circuit on a real breadboard instead.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'd like to see a study done of this kind of application, but
| removing all slowness. Perhaps you could run it on a $10k
| gaming rig, or pre-render all interactions or something to make
| all reactions instant.
|
| That should inform us of the real value of a lifelike 3D UI,
| separately from the effects of the jankiness that normally
| accompany them.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| This specific circuit simulator does have some performance-
| related jank, but even if you ignore it, you can easily see
| where it breaks down, for example:
|
| * If you look at the black/red wires going to the Arduino,
| they kind of overlap
|
| * If you swap the black/red wires (so that one of them has a
| shorter distance to cover), you get visual artifacts
|
| * It is trivial to make a wire unconnected while moving it to
| another hole (and instead just touching the plastic parts of
| the breadboard)
|
| * Making even the most trivial modifications (eg. putting 5V
| directly through the diode) requires a lot of dragging,
| rotating, panning, and zooming to get it done (but hey, at
| least there's smoke if you actually do that)
|
| * There are many things that can go wrong, because the
| developers didn't think about it; for example, the bottom
| power rails of the breadboard don't actually work
|
| * Making a modification to a running circuit is impossible,
| and switching between design and simulation modes takes time
| and does not always remember the camera position
|
| All of those aren't a problem in a 2D simulator. Some of them
| because the 2D simulator abstracts some things away better
| (eg. power sources or wires), some of them because the
| developers could invest more effort in the simulation logic,
| and some of them because the 3D simulator does a bad job at
| the real-life parts of it (eg. overlapping wires or putting
| the connector inside the hole).
| japanman425 wrote:
| Exactly. I was seeing a friend the other day who was using an
| ancient version of mastercam, version 8 I think. I looked at it
| and thought wow I need to update him to a later version.
| However after watching him use it it just all made sense. There
| were a few areas that could be improved, but it was so simple
| and clear to use.
| mickael-kerjean wrote:
| On my laptop, chrome went down entirely as it was using 100% of
| the RAM, had to kill -9 it
| defactoPun wrote:
| but i guess that's the point, you have to have the breadboard
| and components first. If in a stitch, maybe this would do for
| that moment.
| mdswanson wrote:
| CRUMB Circuit Simulator too:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198800/CRUMB_Circuit_Sim...
| kreelman wrote:
| Very cool. I threw on a 9 volt power supply and attached a wire
| across both terminals and clicked "simulate".......
|
| Smoke starts coming out of the battery. I wondered what it would
| do, nice it does that.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| The ones from 2003 worked - this is mostly blank and does
| nothing.
| malerba118 wrote:
| this combines spice simulations with microcontroller
| simulations
| blacklion wrote:
| Proteus mixed mode simulation is here from... let me look it
| up... 1996! 26 years for now.
|
| And it looks modern enough for me.
| kragen wrote:
| for me it combines a blank white page with no error message
| with some buttons at the top that don't do anything
| CoffeePython wrote:
| looks like our db went down for a few minutes when you were
| trying it out! Sorry about that!
| proee wrote:
| This is great for learning - you should consider a mode that
| switches to traditional schematic view so people can understand
| the corresponding circuit.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I believe another web-based tool which can do this already is
| https://www.flux.ai
|
| I've noodled around with it and I like it, but I actually find
| working with pencil, paper, and the actual components to be
| more efficient than panning and zooming around a 3d
| environment. It's not always an option so these simulators are
| very useful, but I've come to realize I'm far better off by
| planning _not_ to use these tools, I guess.
| built_with_flux wrote:
| flux founder here
|
| thanks for the plug!
|
| We are working on making our schematic editor so
| good...you'll never go back to paper :)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm realizing I didn't give flux the credit I should have.
| I actually interviewed to work on it because as far as I
| can tell, this stuff is the future. So that aside, it
| doesn't fit my workflow well today but I don't doubt that
| it will, and for many people it already does.
|
| I'm glad to hear good things are coming! I'll definitely
| keep checking in. Apologies for being dismissive of the
| hard work your team does, especially after seeing the kinds
| of technical challenges you take on and working with
| similar technologies myself these days.
|
| High performance, user-friendly collaborative tools in the
| browser are not a free lunch, and what flux does today is
| already impressive.
| rock_hard wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words...it's a true labor of love
|
| Also no hard feelings...I agree that we are early and
| that there is still a lot of work ahead of us.
|
| Schematic UX hasn't gotten as much love as it needs
| because there was so much other stuff to figure out
| first...we just needed something that worked in the very
| early days
|
| And now we get to come back to it and make things like
| wiring truly great
| [deleted]
| CoffeePython wrote:
| Yeah we'll likely create a schematic view! Thanks
| godelski wrote:
| It sure is pretty, but there's a critical issue. Components can
| have their pins labeled, but this is done in the 3D environment.
| Just place them down on the right side. There's plenty of white
| space there. No one wants to rotate a component around like that
| and strain their head to read. I'm literally just going to pull
| up Google and get the schematic there. You have the information
| but it is displayed in a way that is hostile to the user. I can't
| even see where pin 1 is without this view because there's no
| marker like we'd see on a standard real life component.
| CoffeePython wrote:
| Great feedback, we've chatted a bit about this internally
| already. It's something we'll likely add. In general we're
| looking for ways to make it easier to see
| pinouts/voltages/current/etc.
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| godelski wrote:
| Great to hear. It's hard to put your work out there and you
| did a good job. User interfaces are hard. What's obvious to
| some is hostile to others lol
| incrudible wrote:
| Would be cool if it worked, unfortunately the "Hello World"
| (pressing the button to toggle the LED) already fails on my
| rather high-end system (and Firefox). Surely there is room for
| optimization as well.
|
| In terms of usability, the value I see is from being able to
| immediately recognize the various physical parts that one might
| find in their Arduino starter toolbox. For actual editing, I
| would prefer a different interface however.
| paleogizmo wrote:
| For a nice, polished, _non-skeuomorphic_ circuit simulator, see
| iCircuit [1], which provides native MacOS and iOS clients (based
| on the Falstad JS circuit simulator mentioned elsewhere in this
| thread, if I recall correctly). It differs from most SPICE-based
| simulators in that there is no edit or run mode - the circuit is
| always simulating in transient mode so updates happen in real
| time.
|
| [1] https://icircuitapp.com/
| aifer4 wrote:
| This is a great technical demonstration of how to visualize a
| circuit board. But I would rather walk over hot coals than try to
| actually design a circuit using this interface. Circuits can be
| represented very nicely in two dimensions, which is convenient
| given that computer screens are two dimensional. For things which
| are fundamentally 3D (e.g. models of objects) it can be useful
| for design purposes to have a 3D visualization, but this doesn't
| seem to be the case with circuits.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Nice touch that you can fry a LED, but unfortunately I couldn't
| get the Arduino to fry; it's the expensive part and the one I
| would want to run a simulation to make sure I will not destroy.
| CoffeePython wrote:
| oh most've missed adding that in. we'll make sure you can let
| the magic smoke out of the arduino if you fry it too lol
| kragen wrote:
| what I really want is a circuit simulator that doesn't look like
| it was made in 02003 because it looks like it was made in 01963
|
| the aesthetics and clarity of the schematics of a tektronix
| oscilloscope manual from 01963 plus the instant responsivity of
| the actual 01963 tektronix oscilloscope; but married with the
| flexibility, generality, reproducibility, and monte carlo
| capabilities you can get out of modern teraflops desktop
| hardware, with the scriptability of emacs and the breadth of
| simulation models you can get in ltspice, and of course not
| limited to 10 megahertz
|
| i guess it's true that this simulator doesn't look like it was
| made in 02003 because, after taking several minutes to load, it
| just displays a blank white page with buttons that don't do
| anything
|
| circuit simulators almost never did that in 02003, though i guess
| berkeley spice sort of does until you read its man page
|
| apparently from the other comments it's supposed to be a thing
| with some kind of 3-d model of a breadboard though? why would you
| want that? the reason we usually draw schematics before putting
| together breadboards, and we show each other schematics instead
| of breadboards, is because breadboards are a _terrible_ user
| interface for circuits; schematics are much easier to understand
| because you can organize your components logically instead of
| being constrained by how things are packaged, and also you can
| tell what the components are by looking at them
|
| let me recommend a circuit simulator which, though lacking in
| some ways (especially realistic component simulation and
| integration with spice and kicad), takes advantage of the
| possibilities of computers to do _better_ than paper schematics
| instead of _worse_ : http://falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html
| midoridensha wrote:
| Why are all your year values starting with 0? They should be 1.
| This is the year 12022 FYI.
| kragen wrote:
| one departure from arbitrary conventions is usually too much
| for the lumpencommentariat, frequently sending them into
| incomprehensible rages
|
| with two, as per your suggestion, we might never see any
| followup comments that are actually about how to make a
| better circuit simulator
|
| so far we're at zero for two
| musicale wrote:
| Still trying to solve that Y10K problem I see.
| kragen wrote:
| it's slow going, but fortunately we still have a significant
| amount of time left
| classified wrote:
| But it's invalid. Octal doesn't allow digits above 7.
| blacklion wrote:
| For me, circuit simulator / schematic capture tool (you can not
| have former without latter effectively, nobody creates netlists
| in text editor now) which look modern will use modern conventions
| about mouse and keyboard, which is well-known to anybody who
| tried at least one graphical editor.
|
| You now, left (primary) click for select, click-hold-and-move to
| move, right (secondary) click for context menu, this kind of
| stuff.
|
| Many PCB/Schematics/Simulation packages uses their own old
| conventions, which are alien to modern users, like "you must have
| to choose move tool, click on symbol, move, click to drop in new
| place" and so on.
|
| 3D, skeuomorphism, etc., looks nice in tutorials with 3-10 parts
| but are unusable after that.
| vonnegut wrote:
| I am looking for something similar to this for a Raspberry Pi and
| Python. To allow students to work with the circuits/electronics
| without having to buy the hardware. Raspis are expensive now
| because of the microprocessor shortage.
| panzi wrote:
| Looks very nice, but on my old PC with my new 4k monitor it is
| unusable. It would be cool if it could render at half resolution
| (quarter the number of pixels) during animation and only when
| animation ends render one frame at full resolution.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I just prototyped a circuit using this:
| http://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html?startCircuit=o...
|
| I didn't find it to be ancient at all, and when I put it on a
| breadboard it worked exactly as the simulator ran it. Very
| helpful.
| pkstn wrote:
| Wow, so awesome!
| tempodox wrote:
| Since the title refers to how it looks, this thing looks more
| like a toy than a tool. Also, as far as it's up to me, I'll never
| use an app that requires me to "sign in". I prefer to own the
| apps I use and retain full control over my data.
| frx wrote:
| I agree with you but the website didn't ask me to sign in to
| use the app
| malerba118 wrote:
| You can literally edit and simulate the project while anonymous
| without any limitations.
|
| And then when you decide to sign up/sign in it will restore the
| changes you made while you were signed out and you can pick up
| where you left off.
|
| Is that still not enough?
|
| Also, it's completely free and we have no plans to do anything
| with your data.
|
| For real, i have no clue how to make it any easier/more
| enticing for you...
|
| This has been 3 months of painstaking work and you can't even
| be bothered to try it for free?
|
| Pretty insulting honestly and pretty hard to be an app
| developer these days as this mentality is becoming quite
| pervasive.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| A similar project:
|
| CircuitJS: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html
|
| I couldn't compare to OP because it timed out loading on my slow
| internet.
| tkanarsky wrote:
| Tiny nit: the labels on the Arduino headers are z-fighting when
| zoomed out -- maybe offset them a bit to counter loss of
| precision?
| Kwpolska wrote:
| The competition might look ancient, but IMO, a 2D interface would
| be much more productive and easier to work with. This site is
| completely unusable for me in Firefox (it does work in Edge
| though).
| sixothree wrote:
| Why is it even a web site? Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but
| this seems slow and unusable. But more importantly, I have a
| hard time bringing myself to trust anything that isn't saved
| locally.
|
| edit: Also I feel terrible that my negative comment has any
| weight in this thread. I don't want to be a detractor. It's
| just that this is not for me.
|
| People work hard to make things and you can't please everybody.
| You definitely can't please curmudgeons like me sometimes.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Yeah, so we started diode 3 months ago and in the beginning
| here we're focused mostly on making electronics more
| accessible to youth/beginners.
|
| One major advantage of web based tools is shareability and we
| hope to see content creators writing articles with embedded
| diode projects so that tutorials can include inline
| interactive examples.
|
| This is already common in the software world with tools like
| codesandbox and stackblitz, but not so much in the hardware
| world. Hardware tutorials often include fritzing diagrams,
| but we think the next step is interactive simulations
| anywhere and everywhere.
| sramsay wrote:
| I would just like to say that this work is _amazing_.
|
| I get what people are saying, but for people trying to dip
| their toes into electronics (and who maybe can't afford the
| equipment just yet), this might be just the thing! I don't
| mean to restrict the use cases, I just think a both/and
| world is just fine. And this is some _excellent_ hacking.
|
| I tip my mouse to you.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Thanks, appreciate the kind words!
|
| It's been challenging to say the least, but that's half
| the fun.
| sramsay wrote:
| Just don't want you to be too discouraged by the HN pile
| on. A lot of this is stuff to think about (and I'm sure
| you're doing just that!). But really, creating a new
| system like this is a massive achievement, and you should
| be proud of what you've done.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I agree with the goal, and agree with web based tooling,
| but the design-centric approach feels like dangling keys to
| keep my attention. Anyone who's attention can be captured
| with dangling keys doesn't have the attention to do
| circuits.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The title does seem like a misaimed comparison.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Does the page just show up mostly blank for anyone else?
| bob29 wrote:
| Yes
| ilyt wrote:
| If you have ever used LTSpice you'd know, the "old" looking
| layout is not really a problem but the arcane way anything is
| done, different from every app I ever used.
| jay3ss wrote:
| LTSpice is pretty great. I used it in undergrad to design and
| simulate a single block of CMOS memory. It was a little tough
| getting going, but once I figured things out it was a great
| experience.
| [deleted]
| chongli wrote:
| I just started using LTSpice a few days ago. It's pretty
| arcane for sure but at least it's consistent. The tool is
| really not that complicated at all. Its value seems to be in
| its simulation capabilities as well as its selection of
| standard components. It does crash here and there, though,
| but I haven't lost any work yet.
| Animats wrote:
| Well, yes. LTSpice is not for schematic capture. It's for
| simulation. If you have to do power supply design, LTSpice
| lets you almost get it right before you order parts.
|
| Here's one of mine.[1] I built that, and it works pretty
| much the same as the simulation does. Except for the
| depletion-mode FET current limiter. The resistor that sets
| the current limit had to be adjusted after building to get
| the same current limit as the simulation.
|
| LTSpice doesn't help with layout. I had to follow the
| layout instructions in the switcher control data sheet to
| get it to work. Some of those paths have to be very short.
|
| [1] https://github.com/John-
| Nagle/ttyloopdriver/tree/master/circ...
| ur-whale wrote:
| > LTSpice is not for schematic capture. It's for
| simulation.
|
| That may well be. IN that case, LTSpice would benefit
| greatly from being able to import the output of a proper
| schematic capture tool.
|
| If LTSpice was OpenSource, that could be added in a day
| of work.
|
| I love LTSpice, but the fact that 1. the
| software sees very little updates over time
| 2. it's closed source and all the cool shit that could be
| added to it by the community won't happen
|
| is really a huge downer.
| Animats wrote:
| You usually use LTSpice only to simulate difficult analog
| parts of a circuit. Not the whole thing.
|
| The important part is the device models that simulate
| components. Those do get updated as new analog ICs come
| out. It's finding a good model that's hard. Linear
| Technology keeps the models updated for their own parts,
| but you have to look around on the Web for many non-LT
| parts.
| wtfmcgrill wrote:
| I jump from altium to kicad to solidworks multiple times a
| day but the most annoying jump is when I go to ltspice and
| go, why is move bound to F7. I stopped even bothering to try
| to use hotkeys on LTspice.
| neltnerb wrote:
| The key shortcuts in ltspice are hilarious, it took a
| decade before I found another program that used R and E for
| rotate and mirror instead of right clicking in some way. I
| still haven't decided whether I prefer the horror of
| embedding models, creating single-system-only library files
| that I can't give to anyone, or ... it's amazing.
|
| I'd probably pay if it was just simple to import 3rd party
| models, even if they're encrypted. Every time I have to
| screw around with some encrypted model I worry about
| whether it's going to end up accurate.
| pjmlp wrote:
| To show my age, during digital circuit design classes I used
| something similar but targeted to Windows 3.x.
|
| It was much better than the simulator shown on this thread.
| nabilhat wrote:
| One reason is a noncritical third-party dependency; the circuit
| canvas will patiently wait in line to load forever until
| fonts.gstatic successfully loads. Normally I wouldn't post that
| kind of feedback here, but there's no readily apparent way to
| submit feedback or bug reports at the site so here we are.
| CoffeePython wrote:
| thanks for the feedback!
|
| ironically maybe it's also feedback that our share feedback
| button is too hidden
| Taniwha wrote:
| doesn't seem to work on chrome either
| CoffeePython wrote:
| Hey! Would love to investigate and see why this isn't working
| for you. Any more info on your OS/specs/browser version or
| what exactly isn't working? Should work on chrome.
| Taniwha wrote:
| latest linux chrome Version 108.0.5359.124 (Official Build)
| (64-bit) on ubuntu latest LTS, directly from google (not in
| a snap). Starts up but central window just has a rotating
| loading icon that never goes away
| jakear wrote:
| Do you perhaps have "Advanced Security" mode enabled, where
| JIT is disabled for new sites? Site was super jank at first
| but once I added it to my exception list it was buttery on my
| M1.
| salmo wrote:
| The tools with origins >2003 are pretty useless beyond making
| things out of prefab parts. That's cool for beginner stuff, but
| I feel like we're dropping people off a cliff from there. Most
| are really just sales platforms for parts or PCBs.
|
| My workflow is a complicated combination of LTSpice, KiCAD,
| prototyping from the schematic and then ordering PCBs. It's a
| little painful, but the tools are fast to use. I wish KiCAD's
| SPICE integration was as natural as LTSpice and I could
| maintain 1 library of parts.
|
| Breadboards are getting too painful for me to use. Too much
| time dealing with bad connections or noise from jumper wires
| being little antennas. It's more of an issue with audio
| circuits than digital.
|
| I guess my dream is if you could easily get a symbol,
| footprint, SPICE model, and 3D model of parts from vendors that
| all dropped into 1 toolchain.
|
| Maybe a commercial offering is more like that. I've never
| really looked.
| ur-whale wrote:
| If LTSpice : 1. was OpenSource
| 2. would *please* switch to modern conventions for
| Load/Save/Cut/Paste/Undo/Redo/Exit keyboard shortcuts
| 3. would have a larger, *online*, library of standard parts
| instead of having to download every missing ones every time
| from random obscure places on the internet 4. had
| a setting for switching off showing the names of *all* the
| new components on the circuit 5. had a vaguely
| sane way to keep all the .asy and .sym files used by a .asc
| in the same directory 6. had a central repo of
| example circuits / standard circuits 7. had an
| API to its spice engine
|
| It'd be the perfect tool.
|
| But in the meantime, and in spite of its old age, it's still
| light-years ahead of the web-based thing from 2022
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The demo lets me choose "PNP transistor" or "NPN transistor",
| and that's it for transistors.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, the whole "looks old = bad" meme rears its head again.
| Some of the most usable web sites in existence like Craigslist
| and McMaster-Carr look "old" but they do what you need them to
| do and do it cross-platform/cross-browser.
| danuker wrote:
| I would add Hacker News itself as a great example.
| yreg wrote:
| Hacker news has horrible accessibility though. Voting on
| touch devices, readability of downvoted comments, screen
| reader behaviour, ...
|
| Of course all of these would be solvable in a "retro"
| design as well.
| okamiueru wrote:
| Indeed. Hacker news is about as responsive as the native
| site.
|
| Reddit on the other hand went to being completely unusable.
| So much so, that I don't understand who and what motivates
| it to be the way it is. It's having on due to "old.reddit",
| but that too is a pain to use on mobile.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| There's also i.reddit.com with its early-iPhone-era
| mobile interface.
| dheera wrote:
| Agreed. I can't figure out for the life of me how to move this
| LED upward in the Z direction. Or bend the pins so I can plug
| the LED into 2 different Arduino pins e.g. GND and A0. I have
| the same problem with most 3D software, I have a 2D mouse and
| it's a fundamentally inadequate human interface device to
| manipulate things in 3 dimensions.
|
| https://imgur.com/wF5voVO
|
| I think a modern 2D UI (i.e. with nice looking fonts, swipe
| gestures, hamburger icons, generous margins and space) would be
| nice.
| yazzku wrote:
| Well, it is like 2003 as far as the real-time performance of
| the graphics go. Or maybe more like 1993.
| CoffeePython wrote:
| Yeah on my machine it's a lot slower using Firefox than chrome.
| We can investigate and see why it's happening.
|
| Also I do agree that 2D interface is probably important to add
| at some point too!
|
| I think right now the skeuomorphism is nice for folks wanting
| to get their hands dirty with circuit projects but don't have
| all the materials/supplies available for whatever reason
| (cost/space/etc)
| macintux wrote:
| macOS Safari (2020 Intel MacBook Pro) is unusably slow.
| [deleted]
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| On Chrome on 2019 MBP, nothing loads until 5secs later. Zooming
| lags 2+ secs. Probably only good for making a presentation on a
| beefy machine, not useable otherwise.
| cpcallen wrote:
| Also doesn't seem to work in Chrome: I see a toolbar and the
| rest of the page is blank.
| CoffeePython wrote:
| looks like we got the HN hug of death lol, back up now
| malerba118 wrote:
| 3d opens up a few extra possibilities for us, but i think
| there's definitely advantages to 2d as well and seeing every
| solder joint on the arduino board is just a waste of cpu/memory
| at the moment. We have some camera presets that let you
| position the camera directly overhead for a top-down view which
| effectively is a 2d building experience. We might create a
| dedicated 2d view if there's enough demand for it!
| Kwpolska wrote:
| The overhead view might not be enough. Performance issues
| aside, if I take your sample and rotate the camera to the
| overhead view, the wires that power the Arduino overlap in a
| kinda confusing way. It's even worse if you swap them around,
| with the wire colors randomly mixing in the middle (but it is
| also broken when looking at it from the side). A 2D-first
| design wouldn't need to worry about it, but it would instead
| route the wires in a way that avoids overlapping wherever
| possible (and two parallel wires would be quite trivial).
| Fordec wrote:
| And on the good software the 2D interfaces take customizable
| color parameters, any level detail you like 3D files,
| customizable fonts.
|
| Just take 20 minutes to customize a settings file and reuse for
| every new project after, iterating as you go and you'll get
| yourself pretty realistic outputs long term.
| duskwuff wrote:
| So many times this. There is a reason why engineers use
| schematics instead of assembly diagrams or renderings when
| designing circuits or discussing how they operate. In
| particular, layouts on solderless breadboards tend to become
| incomprehensible for any sort of even mildly complex circuit.
| p1necone wrote:
| > layouts on solderless breadboards tend to become
| incomprehensible for any sort of even mildly complex circuit.
|
| Translating non breadboard circuit schematics to a breadboard
| is definitely something some people struggle with, It would
| be useful to have a tool that could do that for you.
| gumboza wrote:
| I want 2003. That's the last time anything worked.
|
| LTspice for example.
|
| Edit: worth nothing there is a native macOS port of LTspice now.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| LTspice still works great afaik. I use it on Linux with Wine.
| rahen wrote:
| Have a look at Qucs-S for a native, usable Spice on Linux:
| https://ra3xdh.github.io
|
| It's still missing a comprehensive component library like
| LTspice does though, contributions are welcome.
|
| KiCad can also simulate circuits through NGSpice, but it's
| missing a library and suffers from a lot of quirks.
| Arubis wrote:
| LTspice at least had a gui! I remember sketching schematics by
| hand, marking up nodes with names, then feeding plaintext into
| PSpice.
|
| But it worked great!
| gumboza wrote:
| Yes indeed. I used to do that on a Sun workstation back in
| the 1990s as well. Then go and make some tea while the
| simulation was running.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Considering how many ECAD programs have come and gone since
| the beginnings, over time that could still be a net win.
|
| "When you include the time to earn the money for a car,
| driving can be no faster than walking." (~Mumford)
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| Logism evolution works great and is quite modern.
|
| https://github.com/logisim-evolution/logisim-evolution
| antegamisou wrote:
| > I want 2003. That's the last time anything worked.
|
| This. NI Multisim is one of my [proprietary] favorites too.
| teleforce wrote:
| Just wondering can Multisim integrate seamlessly with
| Ultiboard for circuit emulation since both of them now under
| NI? I know that Proteus simulator can perform the emulation
| to some extent.
| melony wrote:
| Are you using SPICE for the actual simulation?
| CoffeePython wrote:
| Hey! I work on Diode w/ Austin (OP). Yeah we use a wasm-
| compiled version of ngSpice for the circuit simulation.
| kragen wrote:
| presumably melony already knew that because ngspice is mostly
| licensed under a 3-clause bsd license which says
|
| > _Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
| copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
| disclaimer in the documentation and /or other materials
| provided with the distribution._
|
| unless you're violating the ngspice license? or the
| documentation and/or other materials are just hard to find?
|
| parts of ngspice are also licensed under gplv2, cc-by-sa-4.0,
| lgpl-2.1+, or gpl2+, but maybe you aren't using those parts
| melony wrote:
| Melony is not that pedantic and melony does not ask
| questions whose answers melony already know. Melony has
| better things to do than to hound SaaS services over
| alleged license violations (unlike a certain _somebody_ ).
| kragen wrote:
| perhaps if melony didn't know that, it is evidence that
| the required credit is, in effect, not being given; that
| the authors of this software are, in effect, passing off
| the work of the ngspice contributors as their own
| marmetio wrote:
| How will Diode differentiate itself from TINA? They have 3D
| breadboard, web browser, microcontroller code simulation, PCB
| layout, equation extraction, etc.
|
| https://www.tina.com/edison/
| etimberg wrote:
| Cool! We did something similar when I was on the team that
| built multisim.com
| tiagod wrote:
| That's so cool that there's a web version now! I was
| introduced to multisim back in high-school and enjoyed that
| unit a lot, will play around with it on the weekend :)
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| bjourne wrote:
| Am I doing something wrong? The page runs att like 0.01 fps in
| Firefox on my high end workstation.
| revenga99 wrote:
| Man the circuit simulators I had to use at university a couple of
| years ago were old. They were in color and the TA's told me that
| was a big deal.
| bitwize wrote:
| 16 colors at 640x480 resolution! VGA graphics are the future!
| justaj wrote:
| This looks amazing, but I wish the UI would have been a little
| more light-weight. I'm running on 100% CPU in Chromium on my
| Thinkpad X220.
| sgt wrote:
| Looks great, but yes, this is pretty unusable due to the high
| CPU usage. Also on Chromium.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Lightweight UIs sound pretty 2003. Can't have _that_.
| gauddasa wrote:
| I'm not able to see anything except the following message:
|
| Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the
| browser console for more information).
| whywhywouldyou wrote:
| Noted. I guess in the future I will continue to look for things
| made in 2003, because this is entirely useless for any actual
| circuit simulation and/or design.
|
| Looks great if you're trying to impress some of your beginner
| friends, though.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yes, it simulates blowing stuff up. Run this and wait:
| https://www.withdiode.com/projects/03af8e77-ff1b-4304-b1dd-d...
| defactoPun wrote:
| Only thing I miss now is that burnt LED smell xD
| hgsgm wrote:
| dncornholio wrote:
| Unusable on Macbook 2015. Completely freezes my system.
| dingi wrote:
| Is this app even working? It crashes every time.
| blobbers wrote:
| Yay b2logic!
| antegamisou wrote:
| Also check out TARGET 3001! for a 3D view mode
|
| https://ibfriedrich.com/en/index.html
| iHateStylo wrote:
| This looks amazing and some of you _really_ need to stop yelling
| at clouds. Not everything needs to be "boring and functional",
| it's ok for things to be just fun.
| sclangdon wrote:
| Maybe, but a circuit designer is pretty high up the list of
| things that need to be boring and functional.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Seeing it's a complicated laggy (at least on my system) 3d, will
| go with one that looks if not actually made in 2003.
| benibela wrote:
| I actually made a circuit simulator for boolean operations in
| 2003
| ThaFresh wrote:
| incredible
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Wow, this is so much worse than the other one, that looks like it
| was made in 2003. Hilarious.
| meindnoch wrote:
| There are use cases where realistic 3D rendering improves the
| experience over 2D. Circuit simulation isn't among them.
| oillio wrote:
| I hate to be a hater but, this is so skeuomorphic I would just
| rather use a physical breadboard
| ThaFresh wrote:
| incredible, Ive often wondered why they were all so shit
| al2o3cr wrote:
| They're not wrong, a tool like this would have been totally
| impractical in 2003.
|
| For instance, it's currently consuming 70% of a 2.7GHz i7 core
| while idling with the demo project loaded; that would have MELTED
| a machine in 2003! :P
| ur-whale wrote:
| Not sure how this is better than a simulator from 2003.
|
| Or even earlier for that matter.
|
| When this can do what LTSpice can do _and_ show a nice 3D
| simulation with all the voltages in realtime at each node _if_
| one wants to see said simulation instead of traces, then yeah it
| 'll be an improvement.
| skykooler wrote:
| This spent thirty seconds with a spinning loading icon, switched
| my graphics card to the discrete graphics card, and then Firefox
| hard crashed to desktop. I think I prefer the 2003-era designs.
| ineiti wrote:
| Replace the resistor of the LED with 0Ohm and switch the LED on.
| Nice animation :)
| IshKebab wrote:
| Pretty cool, though I would say that a breadboard is probably a
| worse UI for capturing circuits than whatever we had in 2003.
|
| But it is fair that e.g. LTspice has a terrible GUI. I always
| thought QUCS had the best UI of all the free options:
|
| https://qucs.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
|
| Unfortunately it's not the most popular project.
| jcparkyn wrote:
| If you haven't tried micro-cap, I'd recommend checking it out.
| It became free a few years ago when the company liquidated, and
| it's orders of magnitude more powerful than LTspice (and quite
| a bit more intuitive, but still not great). Don't expect any
| updates though.
| malerba118 wrote:
| 3d does present some additional challenges, but we decided to
| go this route to reduce friction for beginners who might not
| understand how schematics or other abstract representations map
| to the real world circuits they're playing with
| duskwuff wrote:
| I'm still not sure what the 3D aspect in particular adds,
| though. Tools which work with physical wiring diagrams, like
| Fritzing, have been available for ages, and I don't think the
| 2D nature of those tools has ever been a meaningful obstacle
| to understanding.
| azalemeth wrote:
| In my opinion, 3D is useful if:
|
| a) You want to check that your components won't physically
| bash into something else you care about
|
| b) You are designing something that operates at RF to mm-
| wave frequencies and need to worry (a lot) about the
| spatial location of the high-frequency components and
| nearby conductors / ground planes
|
| c) You want to get an idea about airflow and heat
| dissipation on power electronics and/or modules (such as
| power amplifiers) that come with their own heatsinks (some
| SIPs do!)
|
| Kicad and other bits of more hobby-orientated software that
| do a 3D render (such as diptrace) tend to do it for reasons
| (a) and (c). Software that does (b) properly costs hundreds
| of thousands of EUR$PS per year to rent and tends to have a
| UI that makes you scream with frustration at every possible
| moment.
| kragen wrote:
| i agree, those would be good reasons for 3d
| duskwuff wrote:
| Those are all good reasons to use 3D capabilities in a
| more capable tool, but none of them apply here. "Diode"
| doesn't even check for collisions between parts -- it'll
| happily let you stick a DIP 555 "inside" another 555, for
| example -- and it certainly doesn't do any RF or thermal
| simulation.
| bitwize wrote:
| That is _literally_ one of the first things you learn as a
| beginner.
| kragen wrote:
| maybe you should spend your time writing software that
| teaches the beginners how to read schematics, thus enabling
| them to make progress toward their presumed goal of
| understanding and designing circuits, instead of giving them
| additional handicaps to overcome, such as having to use a
| user interface that is as confusing as a breadboard (if not
| more so, if the comments indicating that the pin-1 indicators
| are missing from the simulated chips are correct; in my
| browser the app wouldn't even load)
|
| or at least software that gives you an error message when it
| fails instead of a blank white page
| avsteele wrote:
| This seems pretty cool, esp for a newbie to know how to put down
| a circuit.
|
| I use http://www.circuitlab.com and find it to be quite good for
| laying down parts and doing simulation including time-dependence
| and with parameters. Very reasonably priced IMO.
| app4soft wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Diode: Build, program, and simulate hardware projects in the
| browser_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33396792 (26
| comments)
| hw-guy wrote:
| This one looks like it was made for children.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| You will have to rip ngspice from my dead cold hands.
| defactoPun wrote:
| You have my respect sir !
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I'll take 2003 design over something that looks like it was
| designed by Apple for iOS circa 2010.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Just made me wish it wasn't chugging to render the 3D.
| franky47 wrote:
| For a more schematic + signal analysis, less breadboard IRL
| approach, EveryCircuit is just as good looking.
|
| https://everycircuit.com/
| Kiboneu wrote:
| For reference, here is a circuit simulator that was ported from a
| 2005 project and it is 2D. It also visualizes the voltage and
| current as speed and density of electron packets flowing through
| the circuit:
|
| https://www.falstad.com/circuit/
|
| Maybe a similar sort of visualization could be used for this
| project?
|
| It is neat that it can simulate arduino uno code to pulse IO, as
| an in-simulation workbench.
| laveur wrote:
| I use this a lot for quickly testing things out when I am not
| entirely sure what I need. It's incredibly powerful, and give
| you scopes so you can verify things work. It may be very old
| and look ancient by modern standards but it's much more usable
| for me. Also I don't need sonmething to simulate an Arduino, I
| need something to say test a op-amp summing amplifier.
| kragen wrote:
| the simulation blows up sometimes
|
| it doesn't look ancient to me
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I was trying to rig a feedback loop between a lamp and a
| photoresistor but it isn't working. Do you know if the
| photoresistor actually reads in light generated by other
| circuit components, or is it just supposed to simulate a
| variable resistor responding to light from outside the circuit?
| alphabetter wrote:
| I've contributed quite a lot to Paul's simulator, including
| doing the port so it runs natively in the browser.
|
| The photoresistor is just controlled by the slider in the
| side-bar. It doesn't respond to lights in the circuit. There
| is an "optocoupler" under "active building blocks" that does
| connect optically.
|
| I've seen a few requests to add feedback that occurs outside
| the electrical domain - light is one, but also for mechanical
| movement (motors that turn generators). But, I pesonally
| think it's hard to know how to model all these non-electrical
| interactions in a way that is visually clear and effective.
| Kiboneu wrote:
| Thanks for your contributions. I played circuit.js
| obsessively during high school (as well as some of the
| other simulators). It was just way more intuitive than
| spice. I picked up Art of Electronics around that time.
|
| Ten years later, just the other day I was using it to
| prototype some filter and resonator circuits.
| [deleted]
| JCM9 wrote:
| "Doesn't look like it was made in 2003."
|
| Sometimes in tech we don't do a good job of recognizing that a
| problem is essentially "solved" and further "innovation" isn't
| helping. The reason why stuff looked like "it was made in 2003"
| was because that essentially solved the problem. All the extra
| iterations on top of that arguably didn't help.
|
| A lot could be said of many forms of web design too. The basic
| designs of the late 90s and early 2000s were very functional. A
| lot of the junk out there today looks flashy but is borderline
| terrible at actually communicating easily navigable information.
| There are good exceptions today, and to my point those are
| broadly things that didn't try and reinvent the wheel through
| unnecessary "innovation" in "design."
| theodric wrote:
| Yes! Somebody had to say it!
|
| We thrive on novelty, especially people drawn to tech. With the
| pace of change in the early years of modern tech, making things
| constantly change appearance was natural and unavoidable, so
| we've come to expect it, but some things are eventually good
| enough. Chairs, sinks, toilets, plates-- there may be edge
| cases of radical divergences from their settled forms, but for
| the most part, they're stable and consistent.
| jmole wrote:
| This is a bad take - most UIs from that era are objectively
| worse, and most of the good ones have been carried forwards and
| incorporated into newer versions.
|
| With old software, you have a lot of experimental ideas that
| make it into prod. Want properties on this item? Sorry, right
| click rotates the component. Click the component and press P
| instead.
|
| Today, at least in the professional software world, UIs are
| better than they've ever been and the programs are capable of
| infinitely more. And in 20 years we'll be looking back on this
| era the same way: "What do you mean you can't see an AR preview
| of this component you're working on?" "You had to label each
| wire of the I3C bus by hand??"
| dpacmittal wrote:
| I don't know, i still prefer Win XP/7 UI over Win 10/11
| Already__Taken wrote:
| xp/7 is no simple slash and is filled with the screams and
| tantrums of vista and Windows 2000 curmudgeons.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Aesthetics aside, we're interweaving a wasm port of ngspice
| with a microcontroller simulator and running realtime
| simulations all in the browser which i would say is innovative
| in several ways
| physPop wrote:
| That's like saying "we're making it less performant and more
| fragile on purpose"
| malerba118 wrote:
| We envision it going more like this:
|
| "here's an interactive simulation to illustrate my point
| <embed src="diode-url" />"
|
| instead of:
|
| "to see my point please download these files, download this
| version of ltspice, and then give it a run"
| blululu wrote:
| The simulator under the hood is cool - someone even got a
| component to smoke. But the post leads with a pretty
| condescending title that focuses on aesthetic motivations by
| dumping (superficially) on everything else. Naturally people
| are going to focus on the usability of the interface and
| unfortunately it is really hard to use. Gratuitous 3D is not
| a good design choice for a number of reasons that others have
| elaborated in great detail.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Hard to use? what do you mean, you drag parts around and
| then you click a simulate button, that's it. You think
| configuring a transient analysis with 8 parameters is
| easier? I'm sure it's easy for people who are already
| familiar with it. But face it, no high schooler is going to
| be itching to start an electrical engineering career
| because they got their hands on a spice simulator.
| blululu wrote:
| Yeah it's hard to use. It's hard to drag parts around in
| 3D space with a 2D mouse. There are tons of ambiguities
| about targeting/accordances. A 2d orthocam view looking
| down on the bread board would be much easier to see and
| manipulate. There are several posts outlining issues with
| usability on this thread already. I think that the
| product is compelling but the interface still needs some
| work if it is going to be an improvement over 2004.
| malerba118 wrote:
| Indeed it's hard to drag things around in 3d which is why
| we restrict movement of parts to the XZ plane effectively
| making it a 2d editor in a 3d viewer.
| blululu wrote:
| Yeah. 3D view navigation is generally tricky with
| mouse/keyboard. The way it is setup here is good. The
| problems come in when there are also interactive elements
| in the view and this leads to a lot of usability issues.
| The mouse click/drag operation is overloaded and no
| feedback is provided to disambiguate different modes.
|
| A few quick issues that I encounter with this (in trying
| to build a basic waveform generator):
|
| * At a slant angle view a lot of components are blocked
| and cannot be clicked, one must change the view in order
| to target them.
|
| * There is no feedback provided to disambiguate between
| when the mouse will engage in camera/view navigation vs
| component translation.
|
| * No feedback is given in the hover state to let the user
| know when component they are targeting. (I frequently
| moved the whole breadboard by mistake).
|
| * Component placement is very hard. The holes are small
| and all look the same. Offering some feedback about which
| holes would be connected would be much easier to use.
|
| * Connections are hard to ascertain. Sometimes this
| requires a change of views, but also the bread board get
| cluttered. Offering some visual affordance for the
| connections could help make this superior to a physical
| equivalent and also remove the requirement for tacit
| knowledge (most people don't know how the rows/columns of
| a breadboard are connected.
|
| * Wires get tangled. They currently take a linear path
| (in XY) between the two connections. Some research has
| shown that using curved paths is easier for the eye to
| follow (so something like a smooth step). Alternative
| offering some ability for the user to push/pull them
| apart or edit a bezier path might help her).
|
| * Components have no flexibility. One must use wires to
| get the correct circuit topology which complicates things
| visually/ interactively.
|
| Again I want to be clear that I think that this
| technology is really interesting and it has a lot of
| promise - especially since it is a pure web stack. I also
| think that it is not yet at the stage where it can
| arrogantly mock its rivals for using 15 year old UI
| component libraries.
| [deleted]
| fromaj wrote:
| for anyone looking for something like this, especially for
| teaching - TinkerCAD has a circuits app that is extremely similar
| but without the janky 3D. https://www.tinkercad.com/circuits
| scott_h wrote:
| Guess what component a simulator named diode that doesn't have...
| your_challenger wrote:
| Is it so hard to buy an Arduino and a bunch of electronics
| components today? The simulation and its "3D" models seem
| finicky. And a lot les intuitive.
|
| A 2D simulator + an actual hardware would have taught me a lot
| more for lot less time.
| scott_h wrote:
| Guess what component a simulator named diode doesn't have...
| [deleted]
| acutesoftware wrote:
| This is very cool, though as others have said it is fairly
| resource intensive.
|
| I'd love to see a schematic exported or even shown as you press
| simulate (you clearly have it the components and links in memory
| somewhere to do the simulation). This would be great for
| debugging.
| jesselawson wrote:
| I'm sorry about all the negativity in the comments. What I see is
| something that was handcrafted with the careful touch of a
| craftsperson that represents your individual vision for a
| specific digital experience. I can tell you put a lot of time
| into making this. Thank you for sharing this!
| pugworthy wrote:
| Ah skeuomorphism my old friend. So good to see you!
| musicale wrote:
| Is that you Scott Forstall?
| oscillonoscope wrote:
| Nice idea but it's not very useful without net names or a
| schematic view. A nice looking UI isn't good if it's not
| functional
| [deleted]
| donatj wrote:
| UI needs a lot of work to make basic tasks easier.
|
| I started from scratch and managed to build a simple blinking LED
| using a 555 but found the general process far more fiddly than
| need be. Took me almost 10 minutes to do what should have been
| seconds. Took me longer to do than it would have with a real
| breadboard in real life, which makes this thing a miss.
|
| Placing components correctly and in particular rotating
| components is very difficult. Running wires one end and at a time
| rather than just a click and drag felt very fiddly.
|
| Thing feels like a tech demo, not something I would hand a
| learner.
| rickreynoldssf wrote:
| This does nothing but spike my CPU. :(
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