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Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

Every time i've tried to use some combination of a Spice program and something like EagleCad I get really lost quickly. It's clearly software written for people who already know what they are doing.

Do you have any good resources on learning such conceptually?

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I use CircuitLab, which is very helpful from a testing standpoint. As a coder, one of the things that really stresses me about electronics engineering is how untestable everything else, and CircuitLab gives me the ability to mock up simple unit-test-like circuits and see what the expected values should be, including when a power source fluctuates.

It costs a little, if that's a concern.

https://circuitlab.com

(CircuitLab dev here) Thanks for the link. I've also been writing an online electronics textbook with simulations built in https://www.circuitlab.com/textbook/ which should be relevant.

Post a new topic about it as you make updates man! People here would eat that up.

I have a circuit simulator program called EveryCircuit on my ipad (it looks like it's available on Chrome) and it's very simple to use and develop intuitions about basic components.

You really don't need to use EagleCad to lay out your own PCBs for a very long time into the hobby. Perf board and jumper wires are sufficient for prototyping for a long time, most SMD/ball only chips/components have prototyping boards from sparkfun or adafruit or whatever.

I took a few stabs at eagle before trying KiCad which I found MUCH easier to learn. The “Getting to Blinky” series on youtube was what i used but there are probably other good tutorials too.

+1 for KiCAD - it's somewhat hotkey-based, but once you get the hang of the key commands it is very easy and intuitive.

Honestly, after a few designs, making a circuit board feels as easy and fun as playing a puzzle game.

Hackaday has a good series of blog posts for familiarizing yourself with the basic commands:

https://hackaday.com/2016/11/17/creating-a-pcb-in-everything...

I'd recommend not linking to that series of posts. The author is a hothead and generally disliked by the entire electronics community.

Actually, there are some rumors about him that are quite unsavory, and I'm waiting until the cetacean equivalent of the #metoo movement to make an appearance on twitter to see the fallout from that.

What's he doing with whales?

Fair enough I guess, but I would also hate to deny people the same sort of easy path that allowed me to get interested in the subject and access a complicated topic.

Do you have any alternatives to recommend?

That comment is from the series' author, just doing a bit of his signature trolling for which he is so beloved on Hackaday.

I know he (Brian) has expressed that those articles generated underwhelming metrics for the amount of work they take, but they really are a useful resource for people looking to get an overview of their options. And I'm sure the Whalebait fiasco will blow over soon enough.

Hilarious.

What's he doing with whales?

Also check out http://librepcb.org/. Probably just a few months left until the first early release. Watch the FOSDEM talk recording for more information.

Falstadt (iirc) is a great web based one that is pretty easy to use. It's not as accurate as ltspice though but it's good for simple stuff.

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

It used to be a Java applet, now rewritten in JavaScript. Sadly, the Java version vastly outperforms the JS one, at least on my machine, but Java applets are annoying to run nowadays

The JS one is plenty performant on my machine. I love that simulator. Helps me intuitively understand the circuit when I can see the voltage and current on each connection.

I do love that you can double click on a wire and check the box to show the current/voltage there.

Try my electron wrapper:

https://github.com/Immortalin/Simulacra

yes. Kicad and two video series made by Chris Gammell...

https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/shine-on-you-crazy...

https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/getting-to-blinky/

I'd recommend doing them quick, as Kicad is on the verge of a new major release(5.0) and these series might become outdated.

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