CircuitHub (YC W12) Aims To Be A One-Stop Shop For Electrical Parts | Hacker News Reader

CircuitHub (YC W12) Aims To Be A One-Stop Shop For Electrical Parts

techcrunch.com

94 pointskg4lod27 comments

From a guy who surfs for electronic parts on a tablet while falling asleep at nights. Most vendor sites get painfully slow for this.

First impressions:

The pop-over splash screen makes me want to reach for the 'close tab' button reflexively.

If it's "the worlds fast free univeral parts library" I expect to see some part pr0n right when I pull up the site.

I don't want to click [microscopic white-on-gray X] to close the popover, I don't want to "Connect with Dropbox", and I don't want to click a magnifying glass to "Browse the library".

Then on the main page I'm presented with a GitHub-like dashboard. I see big videos for expensive CAD packages I don't own. I see 'LATEST ACTIVITY' which is a long list of entries that are all like: ibelimb updated domain template HTSSOP to var documentType = "/template/footprint/0.9" 24 minutes ago

Where are the parts?! Show me some parts!

OIC, there's a little grayed-out word "parts" at the top. Maybe that takes me to some parts.

Yay! A list of parts! While writing this, I find Firefox can't select and copy the text from this list. That's a pain, because often I have to paste part numbers into other search boxes. I click on the first entry: Microcontrollers NXP Semiconductors LPC1768FBD100,551 IC ARM CORTEX MCU 512K 100-LQFP

OK, a datasheet on the left, cool! Something on the right about dragging-and-dropping to add a symbol and a footprint.

"Add components to this part" "Drag and drop domain models here to form components." I don't get it, but maybe it makes sense if you're a heavy CAD user.

I learn that I can expand the right-hand pane to cover where the datasheet was on the left. I'm a little annoyed that I can't expand the datasheet on the left to cover the section on the right. But I learn that I can move the datasheet to the right and expand it to cover the left.

It seems the datasheet pages are just images? I can't Ctrl-F and search them. But I find the 'download pdf' button on the first try.

The 'summary' section looks useful. It would be even more useful with a parametric search.

Looks like a good start! Bookmarked.

Hi from Jonathan (cofounder). Thanks for the awesome detailed feedback. We hear you and are already working on (or have it on the near-term roadmap) almost all of this. I apologize for any frustration thus far. I really do.

Perhaps this will help until then: (1) You can click anywhere that isn't the splash screen (any dark area) to dismiss it. (2) You can jump straight to parts by URL https://circuithub.com/parts or (3) by the big button on the splash screen in the lower right.

No apology needed. Just keep doing cool stuff and I'll check back from time to time.

Thank you! I hope you will. Things are moving really quickly internally. In other news, we fixed the splash screen. It now permanently dismisses so you shouldn't see it too often. That was our intention we just didn't quite get it right the first time ;-)

I confirm only seeing the splash screen once more. Thanks. :-)

I feel silly even suggesting this, but have you considered some kind of 'like button' and a way to share comments on parts? I swear, I've never asked for such a feature before, I don't even have a FB account! :-)

Is there somewhere else can we circuit dreamers and designers chat about parts by number? For example, this search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=555+timer+comments doesn't turn up much for arguably one of the most well-known part numbers.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say you hacked into our white board software... ;-) Yes! It's all coming.

When they say "shop", I thought it was going to be a specialized store for buying parts.

In fact, it seems to be more focused on becoming some kind of cross-application database of parts information, storing data sheets and CAD models for use in schematics design. Their own description includes the word "library", which is more descriptive. I guess I'm (as a non-native speaker) is intepreting the term "one stop shop" too literally, when the context seems to allow it.

At least that's what I think, so far. Also, the only way to "log in" seems to be to connect my Dropbox account to their site, which I found odd.

Also, since they promise free access, I'm not at all sure about the business model here. Of course, lots of other people seem to be so I'm sure it's fine. :)

Agreed. I was expecting Octopart II, when I like the original Octopart just fine. I hope these guys work together with Upverter and Octopart to become the killer platform for online hardware development though--Upverter's existing Octopart integration is good, but it sounds like Circuithub could be the missing link since adding device footprints, different package styles and pinouts etc. is still a PITA with just about anything (without even getting into SPICE models).

No worries, I'm a native speaker and I was just as disappointed to learn that it isn't a parts store.

It looks like it's trying to be a better datasheetarchive.com, which is definitely nice to have because those sites are utter crap. However, I guess these guys will have to play catch up getting google to index all their datasheets, so when I google "lm1117t", I actually get the relevant power regulator datasheet.

At the moment, they appear to be relatively empty. I tried searching for anything beginning with "LM" or "2N" and got basically nothing. Would be nice to have a few of the basic components in there!

Speaking as someone who designs hobby electronics, this is a very good idea. I can't count the number of times I had to type things like "mcp23018 eagle library" into google. And get no useful results except link farms. And then have to create a library part in Eagle, which is a painful process, thinking all the while that many other people are probably doing the same thing right now.

I will definitely be contributing my libraries.

You should try Kicad. Similar problem with libraries, except making new footprints is my favorite part of the suite. It is a pleasure to use.

It's basically datasheets.com but somehow even more annoying.

I wouldn't trust a 3rd party footprint database either - the amount of times I've seen people fuck up their first prototype by throwing some footprint they found on the board and then realising the pins were wrong etc is insane. Saw 5 on the same board once!

What would it take to make a footprint database you can trust? I would imagine that community ranking/flagging of content could surely clean up inconsistent or invalid designs making the database more reliable.

Would approved manufacturer accounts that contained all the parts from a manufacturer make them more trustworthy?

To your second paragraph, 100% yes :)

Well lets hope that the CircuitHub team can get the traction they need to get the attention of the big manufacturers then.

There's certainly a chicken and the egg problem happening with this kind of innovation right now. I know for a fact that there are many people at the large manufacturers that know that symbol and footprint library management is a major headache. They all want a good solution to the problem, but nobody is willing to take the plunge on an as yet unproven system.

Hi Ben, I hope your well. Ideally we would like manufacturers to setup their own accounts and approve their own lib's, that would be a big win for users. Basically i think this problem has slipped between the cracks, the semi co's, engineers, EMS houses, EDA vendors etc all palm it off to each other!

Yeah I think that's definitely been the problem thus far.

There's a wind of change in the air though, I would definitely encourage you to try contacting the large manufacturers directly and see if you can get some buy-in. We've had some very encouraging discussions with some of them recently.

Let me know how it goes, if you don't get any joy perhaps we can hook you up.

exactly, creating everything yourself from scratch is no panacea though, it's easy to make mistakes.

We think that the first time somebody makes a mistake with their library is the only time that mistake should be made. I.e everybody get's the fix automatically.

As a professional electronics design engineer, this is potentially a hugely valuable service. A big chunk of time is, as @jwr states, spent creating CAD representations of real parts. Other professional library services exist, but they are very expensive. Well done.

"The world's free universal parts library" "There are 124 more parts"

A ways to go!

If footprint/symbol files and part metadata will be sourced from users, will that communal resource be made available through an API and/or bulk data releases? Or will it be controlled and enclosed?

The screencast has an old front page which mentions "Like Wikipedia[, we will not charge for access]", so my hopes and expectations are high! Of course Wikipedia is not a for-profit endeavor.

actually the API is public and the file format is standards based, we just havent had time to document everything yet!

Agreed we need to do better with adding more parts, please free to help out haha.

Am I missing something? I realize I didn't login (I don't use dropbox), but every part I click on has nothing but a datasheet and specifications? No footprints, no symbols, etc. listed?

Unless this is a bug, perhaps it would do well to show that there are X symbols and Y footprints for those of us just perusing? Additionally, only getting reference to about 140 parts, I'd hope that you would've launched with more than that.

we've had a bunch of new parts created today as people test out the site. Please feel free to signup and contribute.

Here's a part that's pretty complete.

https://circuithub.com/parts/MOLEX/87715-9006

I am wondering - how do these startups get the media (techcrunch in this case) to write about them on their launch day. They just launched, have no business. There are countless new startups everyday. Is it because of the relationship (YC, Google Ventures)? Or do they pay for the articles? Or the journalists' personal preferences? Or what?

Techcrunch literally covers every single YC start-up.

Is YC paying TC for the coverage or is TC doing it for the clicks and caters to HN because many people here will look?

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