Flux.ai being the incumbent
Silixon based out of the UK have been showing demos
Quilter and DeepPCB for layout
The recent OpenAI demo...
I went the other way and pre-designed sub circuits with a set of rules that allows simple merge assembly, unfortunately I didn't have the time or budget to continue with it, but I took the constrained approach as with hardware, things can't be 99%.
The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy.
Any questions about the use of AI for any form of automation on forums/Reddit get shot down instantly and the OP's told 'skill issue' more or less. In my opinion, just as with software, most work is simple and should be automated, there will always be a need for the real engineering when it comes to high specification work, high volume optimisation and hardware debug (although Claude code is pretty handy at driving a Jlink)
> The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy.
Stay away from Reddit and forums if you want to see where the open minded people are looking. There are a lot of communities where EEs are experimenting with newer technologies and sharing their results, with realistic appraisals of what can be done.
You also need to understand the history of autorouting technology for PCBs. Autorouters with auto layout have been around in many forms for years. Their output never compares to a skilled EE doing it manually. The gap between autorouter output and skilled operator output is even bigger than the gap between a good developer and average AI codegen slop.
I’m interested in this space, but even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go for boards more complex than simple hobby boards.
I do think this is going to be good for hobby people doing simple PCBs though
Magic smoke is important, as it indicates a design parameter was exceeded.
I often recommend folks get a mini thermal camera for their phone... as inspecting for issues in electrical, hydraulic, or mechanical systems gets a fair bit easier/safer. =3
> Stay away from Reddit and forums if you want to see where the open minded people are looking. There are a lot of communities where EEs are experimenting with newer technologies and sharing their results, with realistic appraisals of what can be done.
This is probably not the primary way people use the tool, but if I log in (desktop, Chrome on macOS), click "Start a board" on the sidebar, and go to click any of the inputs, I can't type text in them (the inputs are "Start from an example", "What are you building", and "The brief".
Why would somebody ever use a hosted version? I see
"One-click gerber, DXF/STEP, render and BOM export" and "Altium support beyond KiCad" in cloud plans, dunno if they are compelling.
It seems like this is just controlling KiCad. Assuming this produces a BOM as well, you could take the output files, send them to a board house like PCBWay or JLPCB and get the boards stuffed and shipped to you.
The board houses may have questions for you that may be difficult for you to answer, but theoretically you could answer those with AI and get fully assembled boards delivered right to your doorstep.
not quite. copperhead operates on its own hardware IR, compiles verified KiCad files and generates manufacturing outputs.
we're also building a design house around it to close the loop with fabs, handle DFM questions and eventually let you hit "order" and receive fully assembled boards!
With AI enabled consumer hardware usecases going to explode this is something super relevant. At least 5 startups have pitched their wearables to me and they could definitely use this
The website is the marketing for the product, most people see that first, and they wont go further if your front door is festooned with goofball stuff.
copperhead isn't just a wrapper around claude or gpt. it combines model intelligence with its own hardware IR, deterministic engines and continuous verification.
Some PM realized that agents will not push back against waterfall style project planning, so now we get an agent for all possible versions of waterfall projects.
fair critique but copperhead works as a feedback loop: design, verify, revise and repeat. closer to an engineering control loop than waterfall with an agent on top :)
When it gets to the end of the design loops, can it run simulations and tests, or is that out of scope i.e., for another product? (I didn't notice testing on a very quick peruse, but that doesn't mean I didn't simply miss it)
You joke but my coping saw cuts wood much faster than any of my normal saws. I don't know a lot about saws, I presume it's the type of blade on it. And I do indeed have three saws, which is a lot for someone who doesn't know much about saws. One that says it's good for cutting metal, one for wood and one for tight corners in wood (a coping saw).
Flux.ai being the incumbent Silixon based out of the UK have been showing demos Quilter and DeepPCB for layout The recent OpenAI demo...
I went the other way and pre-designed sub circuits with a set of rules that allows simple merge assembly, unfortunately I didn't have the time or budget to continue with it, but I took the constrained approach as with hardware, things can't be 99%.
The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy.
Any questions about the use of AI for any form of automation on forums/Reddit get shot down instantly and the OP's told 'skill issue' more or less. In my opinion, just as with software, most work is simple and should be automated, there will always be a need for the real engineering when it comes to high specification work, high volume optimisation and hardware debug (although Claude code is pretty handy at driving a Jlink)
Stay away from Reddit and forums if you want to see where the open minded people are looking. There are a lot of communities where EEs are experimenting with newer technologies and sharing their results, with realistic appraisals of what can be done.
You also need to understand the history of autorouting technology for PCBs. Autorouters with auto layout have been around in many forms for years. Their output never compares to a skilled EE doing it manually. The gap between autorouter output and skilled operator output is even bigger than the gap between a good developer and average AI codegen slop.
I’m interested in this space, but even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go for boards more complex than simple hobby boards.
I do think this is going to be good for hobby people doing simple PCBs though
It is a named problem, and can't be misappropriated like the $9Tn worth of FOSS code "AI" scraped and compacted for isomorphic plagiarism tokens. =3
I often recommend folks get a mini thermal camera for their phone... as inspecting for issues in electrical, hydraulic, or mechanical systems gets a fair bit easier/safer. =3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem
While physics informed models do exist, they are still going to burn a lot of compute to generate failure modes people didn't know were possible. =3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ
Where are these communities?
The board houses may have questions for you that may be difficult for you to answer, but theoretically you could answer those with AI and get fully assembled boards delivered right to your doorstep.
we're also building a design house around it to close the loop with fabs, handle DFM questions and eventually let you hit "order" and receive fully assembled boards!
I've imagined a chip running as slow as python.
"Nothing commits without its gate."
Do it have extra feature? Speed? Ease of use?