Circuit designer for hobbyist

#1

I'm now starting to play more with interfacing Axoloti to other 'systems'... and I need a way to draw circuits.
nothing too complex, and given limited use, I don't want it to be too expensive, needs to be useable on macOS.

ideally as well as drawing schematics, it would have some circuit emulation... as I'm a beginner, its useful for me to see whats going on, before I blow up opamps/leds/ics :slight_smile:

Ive seen a couple of online tools, everycircuit.com was quite good (for the emulation side in particular), thought a little clumsy on the drawing side.

thoughts, what do you use/recommend for a beginner?

thanks
Mark

p.s. im planning on testing circuits on a breadboard, then moving them to a protoboard... ,im not going to be getting pcbs made. i guess things helping layout breadboards/protoboards is useful, but im happy to go from the schematics.

#2

What about kiCad ( http://kicad-pcb.org/ ) ? It's open source and supports some common formats. Not sure about circuit emulation, though. Maybe you can try to interface it to other spice programs like this: http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/ , open source too.

Also, consider making pcbs, they're fairly easy to make, even if you don't want to use a cad.. You could potentially draw them by hand :grin: , and they're much more reliable than perfboards. All you need is a photoresist board, a transparent sheet of paper (i think it's called tracing paper), sunlight and acid.
Just print the circuit on the paper, stick the paper on the photoresist and leave it in direct sunlight for a few hours. The unprotected photoresist will dissolve and leave the copper underneath naked. After this process you can throw the sheet of paper away and place the board inside the acid solution.. Acid will dissolve any unprotected copper and leave the circuit in place.
Put it in sunlight again to get rid of the remaining photoresist, drill holes and solder components. Ta-da, super easy (this can be done in fablabs too)

I'm telling you this because pcbs are much more reliable than perfboards.. I wasted my final project at high school by not making the pcb and leaving it on perf, and i basically abandoned electronics for that...

#3

aimSPICE should fit the bill. It is a more modern and still maintained version of spice. This is, if the actual simulation of circuit design is your aim (poor, I know!). You can download it from the webpage which is as minimalistic as it gets :relaxed:

#4

Actualy, I don't use any software, as a novice I find it confusing. I hope this will change in the future though !!
I just started by reading as much as possible, looking at as many simple circuits as possible, trying to ensure I understood what was going on, and lots of trial and error testing. (certainly not suggesting to not use software) I just found it hard to learn from.)
I found flip flop circuits (a couple of resistors, caps, led's and transistors) and started playing with how the caps charge and discharge which is controlled by the resistors etc.. then when I was ready, I looked for other flip flop circuits, and when I came across using 555 ic's, they spawned a whole new test series of circuits like "PWM's".
What I like about how I did it, the circuits weren't too big, easy to follow, and cheap, because they didn't require too many parts. before I knew it I was designing my own combination utilizing circuits I had played arround with.
I talk to much...!

In short, hands-on experimenting has value too.

:grin:

#5

How about http://fritzing.org/

I don't think it does circuit emulation, but it
does do schematics and board layout (with auto-routing).

They also do board fabrication, so you can design your boards and order them all in the one application.

a|x

#6

hmm, a few to try , thanks.

yeah @Gavin that's pretty much what I'm doing.
Ive got a Bastl OMSynth, which is a prototyping board - I like it a lot, got pots, leds, speaker, io, power all to hand, and importantly short circuit protection, so its very quick to try ideas out on.
the synth projects you can also buy, and hence the OMSynth name, are also pretty fun too, I learnt a lot from them.
( you could build a prototyping board quite easily , actually the OMSynth design is open sourced, so you could build that, but I was a bit too much of a beginner, and lazy :wink:)

Ive also got a DSO138, a very cheap scope which I use for probing (find a bit more useful that a multimeter), helped me a lot to see what is going on.

its working quite well, though if I do much more, I think , I'm going to look for a better budget digital oscilloscope, preferably with a signal generator (if such a thing exists!?).
Id be interested in suggestions... has to be reasonably priced, and also I don't want it to computer based. (I don't want to run the risk or blowing that up, by incorrect use :wink:)

#7

Hi, I used Kicad for my ribbon synth prototype and I can really recommend it. It was my first pcb of this size and complexity and I had to learn Kincad on the go, but it really wasn't too hard. It doesn't have a very good library system but the developers are working on it. Eagle is also cool, but you can't make a board of this size in the free version and Kicad also has a very intuitive router which you won't find in Eagle :wink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHDAHpR5Ls

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#8

Kicad is good for circuit board design. If you want to experiment with basic simulations for educational purposes I think Falstad is great: http://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html

Much simpler than all the Spice stuff, but a great tool for learning and experimenting with small circuits.

#9

The Falstad ciruit emulator is gold.

As for schematics and layouts, Kicad is the obvious choice. Backed by both the community, institutions like CERN. It's good enough for Olimex and the USB Armory so it's probably good enough for you.