[HN Gopher] Simulink (Matlab) Copilot
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Simulink (Matlab) Copilot
Author : kaamuli
Score : 25 points
Date : 2025-06-13 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| kaamuli wrote:
| Before I start - Yes, I know the differential equation in the
| video is wrong. I've already fixed it by tweaking the prompt and
| the script so the inputs depend on what's being asked. The
| original issue was that blocks like Sum were being pasted in
| without matching the right number of inputs and outputs.
|
| I'm a 2nd-year aero-engineering student at Imperial College
| London, I enjoy problem solving (did BPhO - gold and UKMT Gold)
| I'm a full-stack dev (or atleast trying to be lol) who hacked
| together Bloxi, an AI copilot that sits on top of Simulink and
| turns plain-English prompts into working control-system models
| and can easily debug them in real time. I felt the pain myself
| this term, watching top-tier students burn hours wiring blocks
| instead of engineering. With today's multimodal LLMs finally able
| to "see" diagrams, this is the first moment an assistant like
| Bloxi can exist and the fastest way to give millions of engineers
| the same productivity leap coders just got.
|
| I built this mainly to get comfortable with LLMs and "prompt-
| engineering," and I think I've hit the point where I'm done
| tinkering--especially now that MathWorks have announced they're
| working on their own version. So I figured I'd share what I've
| got in case anyone wants to take it further and also just to like
| give it out to the world innit.
|
| How it works
|
| Two scripts + simple backend: 1. One builds the Simulink model.
| 2. The other handles the chat + simple UI. 3. Backend that glues
| together the OpenAI API and frontend
|
| Drop in your own OpenAI API key and you're off. I used it to
| debug and build a few uni-project models, and it's been
| surprisingly handy.
|
| At first it just spat out a finished Simulink file, but I wanted
| that ChatGPT "walk-through" vibe make it feel 'magical'. So I
| added a couple of for loops: one to drop in blocks step-by-step,
| and another to wire them up.
|
| Since raw code isn't visible in Simulink (to the best of my
| knowledge), within one of my scripts I had it walk through the
| simulink file and screenshot each stage leveraging the fact
| openAI's API is multimodal, pipe them through the LLM, and let it
| spot inconsistencies. Works better than I expected. Perhaps
| someone can do better or find a better way?
|
| Youtube video of me using it: https://youtu.be/TX0fviaFSyg
|
| Here's the GitHub link if you want to play with it, poke around
| or build on it: https://github.com/Kaamuli/Bloxi
|
| To use download & open scripts then just do openChatbox().
| mrchucklepants wrote:
| Nicely done. Simulink really needs something like this.
| stochtastic wrote:
| This is very cool, thanks for sharing. There are many industries
| and academic fields where Matlab has gone out of fashion (I work
| in one), and my experience has been that there's a lot of over
| the top negativity about Mathworks products, centering mostly on
| the license and business model. But I think there's a lack of
| awareness of just how superior Matlab and Simulink are to all
| alternatives in some domains. All that to say: don't let the
| Matlab hate get to you, you're using the right tool for the job.
| mrchucklepants wrote:
| There really is no alternative to Simulink. When you add
| Simulink Compiler and Embedded Coder, you can do some amazing
| things. If I am doing anything else, I use Python.
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