I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about.

I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable.

Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosmetic issues.

People have yet to even BEGIN to appreciate what these things can do with the right harness.

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ynac 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Witness. I've built three small projects from idea to pilot runs with Ai. Some parts of the process I had some solid experience with, and other parts I was holding the hand of my Ai and hoping he was sober and benevolent. I often had laughing fits of glee when things worked AND I understood them. As good as Ai is at just doing stuff, it's better at explaining and teaching. The back and forth made all the projects better, cheaper, tougher, and ultimately more usable.

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ben_w an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's mildly surprising to me, given what I've seen when I ask current models to make an SVG of something.

Would I be on the right track if I guessed there's a DSL for designing PCBs that would help enforce functional correctness?

	▲	throwaway219450 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		A lot of human PCB errors could be caught by analyzing the netlist against requirements and knowledge of the datasheet. Schematic and board formats are usually plaintext, so you can generate those directly even. Or kicad + python? That’s probably enough for an LLM to check if you’ve mis-wired something, missed a part or chose the wrong resistor to set a regulator voltage. Plus good old DRC/ERC. If you pass all of those, there’s a good chance things will work unless your placement is really bad, but you could manually lay out and autoroute a lot of simple boards. Not to belittle the parent but a 4 layer board is actually simpler in some ways because you have a power plane which is one less net to worry about. For analog work you can even run a SPICE simulation.

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Foobar8568 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My attempt at VHDL was a failure but at least it helped me to get a modern build on a Sockit.

But that was a few months ago, getting high hope with fable and seeing killed before I could even try it for that project killed all my motivations.

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arjie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What do you to get the case? I use build123d with Python and the results are pretty good!

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javchz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Im surprised by how bad LLMs are with SVGs but somehow are oke-ish with CAD and other weird files.

	▲	utopiah 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For circuits then can be simulated. They have a of constraints that might make the problem space a lot smaller. Maybe there are also a lot of text on what makes a good design. I also believe most design related to a physical object have documentation justifying the choices.

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CamperBob2 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What harness have you been using for EDA/CAD stuff?

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rusk 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

In so far as AI can do hardware reliably you can bet your bottom dollar the big chip fabs have already been doing that. They don’t call it AI though and the models aren’t language based, surprisingly enough /s