[HN Gopher] Diode - Build, program, and simulate hardware
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Diode - Build, program, and simulate hardware
        
       Author : rossant
       Score  : 432 points
       Date   : 2026-02-20 22:14 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.withdiode.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.withdiode.com)
        
       | dorongrinstein wrote:
       | wow. looks amazing
        
       | svennidal wrote:
       | Looks great, but pretty difficult to work with. Would be nice to
       | be able to switch to top view to see more clearly where you're
       | plugging things.
        
         | goodcanadian wrote:
         | You can click the background and drag to rotate the view
        
           | lnenad wrote:
           | It's still clunky though. It's a great, cool thing that OP
           | built but just not very practical.
        
         | svennidal wrote:
         | Looks great, but pretty difficult to work with. Would be nice
         | to be able to switch to top view to see more clearly where
         | you're plugging things.
         | 
         | Edit: Clicking the background and dragging it actually gave me
         | the top view I was looking for. Thank you goodcanadian. That
         | said, I still think this application is a better skillset demo
         | than a practical tool to use.
        
       | NooneAtAll3 wrote:
       | lacks exception catching for when webgl is disabled
        
       | zkmon wrote:
       | Super cool. Wonder if we can input the circuit as code.
        
         | bandrami wrote:
         | There used to be some really good web-based SPICE interpreters
         | but I can't find them now. This was before javascript ate
         | everything, so you would enter the netlist, click a button, and
         | get a GIF or the current at a specified terminal or whatever
        
           | eqvinox wrote:
           | Well, SPICE is still around in its zillion forks and
           | dialects...
           | 
           | AIUI the best frontend is kicad, though I never really tried
           | that, I just wrote the text files by hand.
        
         | eqvinox wrote:
         | > Wonder if we can input the circuit as code.
         | 
         | SPICE. You're describing SPICE. :)
        
         | d-us-vb wrote:
         | As others have mentioned, SPICE is the traditional answer to
         | that question. But SPICE feels more like a macro-assembler for
         | circuits.
         | 
         | One project that comes to mind for high-level programming style
         | circuits-as-code:
         | 
         | https://github.com/atopile/atopile
         | 
         | Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39263854 More
         | recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44548449
        
         | numpad0 wrote:
         | No one realistically speak SVG. Human consciousness isn't a
         | software built on language. Speech center is just a part of a
         | human brain.
        
       | PunchyHamster wrote:
       | the 3D look is cool but makes it harder to put stuff together
        
       | fercircularbuf wrote:
       | This is really terrific!!!
        
       | shakna wrote:
       | Holy requests, batman.
       | 
       | ... Why so many requests for a static asset?
        
         | lm28469 wrote:
         | Because it's yet another slopware of course
        
           | folli wrote:
           | Please don't. The project is around since at least 2022.
        
       | dgxyz wrote:
       | I appreciated that smoke comes out of the battery if you short it
       | :)
       | 
       | Edit: I am ex EE. I will note that it's horrible using this view.
       | It is marginally more horrible than using breadboards in reality.
       | Schematics exist because reality tends to suck or have
       | inconsistencies. For example TO-99 packages come in different pin
       | orders, so 2N3904 has the opposite order to a BC547. Also
       | breadboards tend not to have full length bus bars depending on
       | vendors. At least though in this form it's an ideal
       | representation though which doesn't have parasitic capacitors,
       | inductors, dodgy contacts and no ground plane all over it.
       | 
       | It is good fun though :)
        
         | buescher wrote:
         | Schematics also help explain your circuit because the idioms of
         | drawing them communicate intent. Which is one of the things the
         | Shenzhen/Ladyada/Sparkfun/SeedStudio crowd don't get with their
         | "schematic as data entry for layout" style. Some of them should
         | know better.
         | 
         | Breadboards make me wince a little especially in a professional
         | setting but I've made my peace with dev boards that come with
         | DIP-style pins for them. Decent breadboards are so cheap now
         | that every dev board get to live on its own permanent
         | breadboard.
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | "... _schematic as data entry for layout_ style... "
           | 
           | Maybe you can explain.
           | 
           | Are you saying in these cases often the physical PCB layout
           | follows the geometry of the schematic?
        
             | buescher wrote:
             | I mean when they put parts down on the schematic and just
             | attach net names to them. You know, the pull-up resistors
             | in the corner with named nets on them, not shown attached
             | to particular pins or buses. Usually with a dotted box
             | drawn around them. Frequently horizontal.
             | 
             | Also usually totally implicit power routing. And no one
             | that draws schematics that way has ever learned the value
             | of drawing IC symbols to fit the circuit as opposed to the
             | physical pinning of the device.
        
           | compumike wrote:
           | > Schematics also help explain your circuit because the
           | idioms of drawing them communicate intent.
           | 
           | I think this is a key point. One could imagine three layers:
           | 
           | (1) NETLIST: a list of text-only descriptions, like "R1 1 0
           | 1k", or even a sentence description "connect a 1k resistor
           | between node 1 and node 0"
           | 
           | (2) SCHEMATIC: a 2D drawing with canonical symbols, straight
           | lines for wires, and labels/notes
           | 
           | (3) LAYOUT: a 3D (or multi-layer 2D) physical representation
           | for PCB, or in this case breadboarding
           | 
           | All three layers are useful. (Obviously you need layout to
           | make a PCB, and you need a netlist for simulation.)
           | 
           | But for most humans, where we have 2D visual representations
           | baked in, if you're trying to understand or communicate
           | what's going on:
           | 
           | - It's really really hard to keep track of a bunch of text
           | sentences like a netlist and node numbers/names for all but
           | the simplest circuits -- maybe 3-5 elements?
           | 
           | - It's really really hard to follow a 3D layout of PCB tracks
           | that leads to pads, and then having to remember pin orders
           | etc.
           | 
           | - It's easiest to follow a schematic diagram. It's browsable.
           | It contains "idioms", as you say, about signal flow, logical
           | block groupings, etc.: purpose and intent and functionality,
           | in a way that netlists and physical layouts don't.
           | 
           | FYI, for medium-large digital circuits, I don't think this is
           | true: probably just reading VHDL/Verilog, like reading source
           | code, makes more sense. This is closer to the "netlist"
           | level. I think that's because you'd name modules and
           | inputs/outputs in a way similar to how you'd name functions
           | and arguments in software, which doesn't really apply to
           | "Resistor" or "Capacitor" as primitives.
           | 
           | But for a pretty big practical range of mixed-mode and analog
           | things, I'd argue that schematics really are the easiest
           | level for our brains.
           | 
           | (Disclosure: I'm one of the founders of CircuitLab
           | https://www.circuitlab.com/ (YC W13) where we've been
           | building an online circuit simulator & schematic editor for a
           | long time. Although I'm mostly on the simulation engine /
           | netlist side. My cofounder and other teammates have done most
           | of the schematic GUI work.)
           | 
           | IMHO solderless breadboards still have their place for
           | prototyping some slow circuits, ballpark maybe < 1 MHz
           | signals, if you're aware of the extra capacitance and
           | limitations. :)
        
             | buescher wrote:
             | You essentially can practice the classical art of memory on
             | a 2D representation (think why you can remember who was at
             | lunch by thinking about where they sat), and it's useful to
             | have them at different levels. Almost any nontrivial
             | schematic should have an associated block diagram (by this
             | I do not mean it necessarily should be captured at the
             | block diagram level in a "hierarchical design"; these can
             | be more trouble than they're worth). There are other types
             | of diagrams that can be useful, too.
             | 
             | I haven't done much HDL work so I don't have strong
             | opinions there, but let's think about graphical
             | representations source code and software intent for a
             | moment. I like to see some block-level description of
             | firmware even if it's just a few rectangles representing
             | the main loop and each ISR other other process with text
             | indicating what they do. I like to see statecharts. If
             | someone has written an implicit flags-and-conditionals
             | state machine, I'll draw the statechart and start probing
             | for bugs and debugging from there. Tools like Scitools
             | Understand are drastically underrated for figuring out
             | other people's code, incidentally.
             | 
             | What kills me about the aforementioned style is that it
             | eschews the schematic as a tool for thinking and implicitly
             | sees schematic capture as a layer of friction you have to
             | get through to get to layout. I suspect a lot of designs
             | drawn that way were built up point-to-point on a breadboard
             | and never sketched or even otherwise mentally visualized.
        
         | jhedwards wrote:
         | Ah this reminds me of my first big mistake with PCBs. I have
         | recently started down the hardware track, and my first PCB has
         | a number of BC547 and BC558 transistors on it.
         | 
         | Once I had a functioning prototype, the next step was to
         | convert it into a schematic. After that, you have to convert
         | the schematic into a PCB. Now we are at two layers of
         | translation, and at this step I made a mistake: I wanted to use
         | SMD components to save money, and I found that the BC8xx
         | transistors are the SMD equivalent of the BC5xx ones, so I used
         | the footprint of the BC8xx transistors in my PCB, with no
         | errors from KiCad.
         | 
         | As it turns out, the BC8xx footprint is not compatible with a
         | BC5xx schematic! The pinout is different: the base is pin 1
         | instead of pin 2, so the components in my PCB that use
         | transistors (crucially, the voltage controlled amplifier)
         | didn't work. Unlike a bug, that mistake cost me $200 and weeks
         | of development time, but after 10+ years of writing software
         | I'm still happy to be making things that people can touch.
        
           | dgxyz wrote:
           | We've all done that sort of stuff!
           | 
           | Mine was assuming that the stripe on tantalum SMD capacitors
           | was the negative side. First prototype board came back from
           | the fab and pick and place department (we had it in house).
           | Immediately caught fire when I powered it up :)
           | 
           | Second lesson, start with current limit on your bench supply,
           | not throw 10A into it :)
        
           | estimator7292 wrote:
           | I've been an EE for a decade and I made this exact mistake
           | last week. It's inevitable lol
        
             | buescher wrote:
             | You can catch it with a footprint review. List all your new
             | footprints or old footprints assigned to new parts, and
             | have someone else check them against the datasheets. Or if
             | you ever have the good fortune to work with a very good
             | layout designer, they will check things like that for you
             | just to catch you out.
        
             | quinnjh wrote:
             | I haven't managed to design a pcb without finding an issue
             | in the first run.
             | 
             | Shoutout to OSHpark's prototype service. Something like 5
             | bucks an inch and you only have to toss out 3 if you find a
             | fault.
        
               | dgxyz wrote:
               | Write a list of everything that you fuck up every time,
               | check the next one against it and eventually you get a
               | good one first hit. I had three in a row that worked out
               | of the box in the end!
               | 
               | Printing the board outline and layers combined as well.
               | And checking you used the correct footprints against
               | actual parts helps.
        
         | neuralRiot wrote:
         | I'be been reading schematics for over 30 years, sometimes i
         | need to draw one just to understand an idea that I have. These
         | "real" drawings (like fritzing) hurt my head. They might be
         | useful for the casual tinkerer but anyone who finds electronics
         | interesting should learn the basic symbols.
        
       | bandrami wrote:
       | OK the smoke was really funny
        
       | seanthemon wrote:
       | A more mature version of this is "CRUMB" found on steam, it costs
       | money but it's got a lot of great features.
        
         | WalterGR wrote:
         | https://www.crumbsim.com/
         | 
         | Steam: 78% positive reviews out of 675. $8.99. Windows-only,
         | though the website says "CRUMB is available for iOS and Android
         | along side its desktop counterparts on Windows and MacOS."
         | 
         | https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198800/CRUMB_Circuit_Sim...
         | 
         | No affiliation.
        
           | superxpro12 wrote:
           | interesting. how does this compare with more "industrial"
           | sims like "proteus" https://www.labcenter.com/simulation/ ?
           | 
           | No affiliation with any. I'm a Comp.E in consumer electronics
           | who likes to keep a pulse on these things.
        
       | KeplerBoy wrote:
       | Not a fan. The standard schematic abstraction is great and
       | actually helps us parse circuits.
       | 
       | Don't add unnecessary complexity just because AIs are good at
       | vibecoding threejs demos (edit: even if this particular demo
       | seems to predate vibecoding and was likely used for training
       | instead of being the product of inference).
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | Got to agree. This is kind of pointless. Breadboards exist to
         | make it easier to build physical circuits. I would also argue
         | there is paedagogical value in actually playing with a physical
         | breadboard. Having to physically orient things in 3D space is a
         | small price you pay for building a physical prototype. This is
         | all the downsides with none of the upsides.
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | The upsides are the measurement tools built in.
        
             | KeplerBoy wrote:
             | You have those in all simulations.
        
               | JKCalhoun wrote:
               | Sure. It's an upside to breadboarding in the real world
               | though.
        
         | icedrift wrote:
         | On the contrary, when I was in high school we had one class
         | dedicated to digital electronics and it revolved around
         | breadboard circuitry. You only had 30 minutes/day to tinker
         | with the physical hardware then it had to be disassembled for
         | the next class. Simulations like this are more approachable
         | then schematics and would have been great for tinkering outside
         | of class.
        
           | throwaway290 wrote:
           | When I was a small child it was cool to play with circuitry
           | (dad did some electronics) but as soon as I encountered
           | components of different shape (a capacitor that looks like a
           | resistor) it stopped making sense to me. thinking in
           | schematics early is key
        
         | colesantiago wrote:
         | This is actually very cool and predates vibe coding, please
         | stop gatekeeping.
        
           | KeplerBoy wrote:
           | I'll grant you the vibecoding comment. That was uncalled for
           | and unjustified.
           | 
           | From an EE perspective I still see limited value in having a
           | 3D breadboard. Having a standardized schematic language is
           | really nice. Everybody knows how resistors, capacitors and
           | transistors look like in a schematic, whereas they are all
           | just little cuboids with varying number of pads in their smd
           | packages. I recommend multisim blue for learning btw.
           | 
           | Nevertheless, a cool project and I should be more positive
           | when commenting.
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | Is there a good free circuit simulator (that use a
             | schematic as interface, I assume)?
             | 
             | I somewhat agree with you in general though--if the web UX
             | is a breadboard... maybe just get a breadboard? At the same
             | time, while physical parts are generally cheap enough,
             | power supplies, multimeters, an oscilloscope... that part
             | of the hobby can add up.
             | 
             | Sometimes too I am waiting a week or two for a part to
             | arrive from Mouser, it is nice to be able to mock up a
             | circuit online.
        
               | asynchronous13 wrote:
               | There are tons of free sim tools. 'Spice' (Simulation
               | Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) was a very
               | early commercial sim. So many of the free ones use some
               | variant of spice in their name. LTSpice, Qspice, etc.
               | 
               | Kicad is an excellent free schematic capture and
               | simulation software.
        
               | JKCalhoun wrote:
               | Thanks. (And KiCad I am very familiar with already. I
               | love that app.)
        
               | buescher wrote:
               | There are many. What's your (computing) platform and what
               | are you trying to simulate? The more professional tools
               | (beginning with freebies like LTspice) are oriented
               | around letting you probe waveforms from simulated inputs
               | and are not as oriented towards interactive probing "does
               | this LED light when I press that button?" as a hobbyist
               | might want.
        
               | JKCalhoun wrote:
               | Thanks. I prefer Mac (maybe preferring online these days
               | though). I do a lot of analog stuff with op-amps lately
               | (analog computing).
               | 
               | I'm breadboarding with physical breadboards but they get
               | messy/cluttered fast, ha ha.
        
               | buescher wrote:
               | I thought so. I'm a fan of Glider.
               | 
               | I personally reach for LTspice from Analog Devices first
               | even if I have better available - it is quick, easy
               | enough to use, and someone has ported the model you need
               | to it already. There is a Mac version on their web site
               | but I have never used it.
               | 
               | Micro-Cap is free-as-in-free-beer but windows-native and
               | will do stability analysis (gain margin/phase margin).
               | 
               | Qucs-S + the backend simulator of your choice is probably
               | your best bet for free software on Mac. Original Qucs is
               | still developed (checkins last month on their github, if
               | you want to try building from source) but hasn't had a
               | release in almost ten years. QucsStudio is now uSimmics
               | and is closed-source and Windows-native. They all have
               | their peculiar uses. I haven't used any of them much.
               | 
               | Online you can use PartsQuest Explore for free for public
               | designs and short simulation runs. I have not used the
               | online version much but it is basically the very powerful
               | Siemens (Mentor) VHDL-AMS simulator that has gone by a
               | number of names (Mentor never commits to names) on the
               | backend. I have used that: it came with PADS Standard
               | Plus. It surprisingly does just about everything at least
               | usably well. It can use spice models or VHDL-A(MS)
               | models. It can use RF s-parameter models. It can use
               | control-theory laplace-transform block models. It will do
               | stability analysis and monte carlo analysis. It can run
               | VHDL models. You can model just about anything you can
               | write the ODEs for in VHDL-AMS: try viewing source on
               | their motor model for example. You won't get the filter
               | synthesis or analysis tools you'll find in a dedicated RF
               | simulator like Keysight Pathwave. You won't get the
               | controls design and analysis tools in the Matlab/Simulink
               | toolkits. But it does a whole heck of a lot.
        
               | peterus wrote:
               | I've found a combination of circuitjs and a spice
               | simulator to be quick for prototyping custom analog
               | circuits (made mainly from discretes). Circuitjs
               | https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html allows you
               | to edit components live unlike spice simulators, but with
               | the tradeoff of convergence issues for more complex
               | circuits, so I use circuitjs as a playground then use
               | LTspice as a rigorous simulator.
               | 
               | If it's a circuit made by composing multiple integrated
               | circuits based on their application notes and not a
               | custom analog design, I just use LTspice alone since you
               | can just import the manufacturers spice behavioral model
               | (assuming they didn't encrypt them...)
        
         | asystole wrote:
         | So we're just using "vibe coded" as a generic insult now for
         | project we don't like?
        
           | KeplerBoy wrote:
           | Well, it somehow gives off vibecoded vibes, even though it's
           | not. Make of that what you want, but that's expressed in
           | quite a few comments here.
           | 
           | Maybe it's just the extremely clean and generic presentation
           | on the website without any links to the author / team /
           | twitter.
        
             | dwringer wrote:
             | For me there seems to be a listing of configurable settings
             | or something but it only pops up for a single frame after I
             | right-click-drag a component - this seems like a broken
             | mouse interaction.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | I don't think the vibecoding jab is warranted, but I agree this
         | is a pretty terrible UI for electronic circuits. Schematic
         | capture exists for a reason! It's not even difficult for
         | beginners to understand if you have a decent UX (which for some
         | reason seems to elude 90% of PCB software).
        
       | fileyfood500 wrote:
       | Interesting if there could be automated circuit designs through
       | it
        
       | wasmainiac wrote:
       | This was done before, years ago, but in 2D. I forget what it was
       | called. It was like an LT Spice clone with better UX.
        
         | unglaublich wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzing
        
           | wasmainiac wrote:
           | That's it, but I was also thinking about
           | https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html
        
         | fra wrote:
         | This was my first thought: this seems like a web + 3d port of
         | Fritzing. Perhaps they even reuse some of the code?
        
       | 1e1a wrote:
       | I feel like the fade-in animation when starting/stopping the
       | simulation takes too long. Also, I think it would be helpful if
       | the currently connected row was highlighted when dragging a pin.
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | Lol, it simulates magic smoke as well.
        
       | 00zer00 wrote:
       | Nice, reminds me of https://wokwi.com/ .
        
         | thinking_cactus wrote:
         | Also the amazing https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html
        
       | krupan wrote:
       | Nice! You can play Electroboom without actually getting shocked.
       | If you do want the real world experience you can get bags full of
       | components on Amazon for pretty cheap
        
         | myself248 wrote:
         | The simulation needs an "Amazon factor" slider, which randomly
         | makes:
         | 
         | * All breadboard wires have some resistance
         | 
         | * Some breadboard wires have very high resistance
         | 
         | * Some breadboard wires have intermittent contact, recalculated
         | every time components are added/removed from the breadboard
         | 
         | * Some fraction of polarized capacitors are backwards
         | 
         | * All capacitors are overrated for voltage and explode at
         | 70-99% of their rating
         | 
         | * Some LEDs smoke at 10% of their rated forward current
         | 
         | * Brightness variation between LEDs that should be identical
         | 
         | * Semiconductors may randomly be another semiconductor in the
         | same class (e.g. a "2n2222" may in fact be any other NPN BJT in
         | the simulation, or the parameters may be entirely random)
         | 
         | * Inductors have 80% variation in core saturation specs, but
         | other parameters are spot-on
         | 
         | * Any component with writable flash (eg USB vid/pid strings)
         | may randomly not actually have writable flash but instead fixed
         | strings and the writes fake success but the values do not
         | change
        
           | buescher wrote:
           | Better simulators can do parameter sweeps and monte carlo
           | simulations so you can explore tolerance stackup issues. But
           | most of the failure modes you've listed there are just why
           | you shouldn't build your circuits for one on breadboards and
           | for another with dodgy parts sourced outside of distribution
           | channels.
        
       | hippich wrote:
       | Are there similar solutions without 3d view? I want to get a
       | simulator that can show me what is going in the circuit, ideally
       | slowed down a lot. For example I was making a dongle with
       | resistor and capacitor which was delivering a pulse-short (i.e.
       | removing power for a short period of time instead of delivering
       | an impulse) and while I was able to confirm overall idea with
       | some online simulator, dialing in capacitance and resistance
       | required physically switching components. Ideally I want to be
       | able simulate such transient effects and arrive at specific
       | numbers ready to be soldered.
       | 
       | And I want it to be free/open-sourse ideally :)
        
         | buescher wrote:
         | Some people like Everycircuit and Falstad for that.
        
         | pedro_caetano wrote:
         | Sounds like you are looking for a SPICE like simulator, there
         | are quite a few free/open:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_electronics_circu...
        
         | a-dub wrote:
         | orcad is the commercial classic for doing schematics with a
         | spice backend. (spice is an oss engine out of berkeley for
         | simulating circuits on computers. for dc it just solves the
         | classic nodal analysis and for ac you can feed in things from a
         | fantasy signal generator and capture things at various nodes in
         | the circuit) there's also some pretty cool looking commercial
         | web thing now that also will maintain netlists with real-time
         | prices and will let you swap parts out and set minimum
         | quantities etc.
         | 
         | kicad is the oss orcad, but i never got good at it. (to be
         | fair, orcad was weird to learn as well)
        
           | asynchronous13 wrote:
           | I think altium has taken over as the top tier commercial
           | offering in this space.
           | 
           | I always disliked Orcad. Especially because cadence had
           | excellent software that predated OrCAD, and for reasons that
           | I cannot fathom chose to promote OrCAD after they acquired it
           | instead of the better software.
           | 
           | Here's a specific example in the interface. If you wanted to
           | draw a wire, the keyboard shortcut of the old software was
           | 'w' but orcad required you to type 'ctrl + w'. Why are you
           | forcing me to use control when w doesn't do anything on its
           | own? It was filled with similar tiny annoyances that just
           | slowed things down. (Admittedly, it's been years since that
           | was my primary work, and free stuff is good enough for what I
           | do now.) I sincerely hope that orcad has continued to improve
           | over the years.
        
             | buescher wrote:
             | Altium has taken over a lot of small to medium sized shops.
             | Mostly because the price is right for its capability. It
             | also has a history of being the least bad compromise
             | between the odd mixtures of excellence and user-hostility
             | Cadence and Mentor tend to come up with, going back to the
             | Protel days, and they've done a good job in the last
             | decade+ of marketing it to those shops. Cadence and Siemens
             | nee Mentor (and maybe Zuken? I've never seen Zuken in the
             | wild, but it always makes these lists) have been neglecting
             | the entry level and smaller organizations and aggressively
             | trying to move their customers to their higher tier
             | offerings during that time. But while it's Altium's
             | flagship product, it is not top tier. It is really entry-
             | level for a professional PCB-level design package, like
             | PADS and OrCAD as opposed to Xpedition and Allegro.
        
         | Helcal_pup wrote:
         | Not foss but tinkercad circuits
         | (https://www.tinkercad.com/circuits) comes to mind.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | Ltspice. Ng-spice
        
       | antimony51 wrote:
       | I could not sign up, because "email rate limit exceeded" but i
       | was wondering if it had a feature to probe the voltage at a
       | certain node.
        
       | paulgb wrote:
       | I remember following this at the time! FYI it was "shut down"
       | (kept online but no further development) two years ago
       | (https://x.com/KennethCassel/status/1620500575183073280)
       | 
       | > Decided to shutdown Diode. (For now the site is live, I'll
       | likely open-source the code in case anyone wants to take the
       | baton and run)
       | 
       | Kenneth is now working on RMFG (https://www.rmfg.com/)
        
       | throwaway290 wrote:
       | Black screen with "Application error: a client-side exception has
       | occurred (see the browser console for more information)."
        
       | samuelbeek wrote:
       | I'm working on a similar project, it's called schematik.io and
       | you can use it to generate hardware projects (schematics,
       | components lists, code, everything). Love the 3d viewer they've
       | done here.
        
       | ge96 wrote:
       | Damn the 3D graphics look great
       | 
       | This would be useful for opensource hardware projects (aimed at
       | beginners) to literally see how things are wired together. I'm
       | still not at the schematic phase myself. But I use MS Paint
       | wiring diagrams.
       | 
       | OMG the wires flex, damn
        
         | MeteorMarc wrote:
         | Give KiCad a try for drawing schematics. It is FOSS.
        
           | ge96 wrote:
           | Yeah that is still on my list to learn eg. designing my own
           | circuit board. My stuff is still basic eg. wiring together an
           | Arduino/RPi to break out sensor boards.
        
       | luispa wrote:
       | this is dope
        
       | agcat wrote:
       | This is so damn cool. I remember 10-12 years ago i used to teach
       | kids to do these things manually. This is a great product for
       | kids to experiment and then run it real life on their kits.
        
       | lasgawe wrote:
       | Years ago, around 10-12 years back, our Windows XP PC had
       | software similar to this. Dont remember the name. I used to spend
       | hours experimenting with it. haha Nostalgia.
        
       | tamimio wrote:
       | I want an AI that I throw the simulation and it design the PCB
       | and all verification.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | ROTFL.
        
       | Groxx wrote:
       | - click simulate in the default "push button to turn on LED" demo
       | 
       | - clock advances
       | 
       | - voltage around the LED slowly rises to infinity for some reason
       | 
       | er.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2026-02-24 23:00 UTC)