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ViktorEE

111 karmajoined 4 anni fa
ex-EE, KiCad porting, ProseMirror + CRDTs.

reach out at viktor dot vaczi at emergence-engineering dot com

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Show HN: KiCad in the Browser

demo.pcbjam.com
110 points·by ViktorEE·6 giorni fa·32 comments

comments

ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Thank you!
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Thanks!!!
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
I mean... It took quite a lot of time... Like months until I got the first dialog.
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Thanks, We did not yet think trough the git integration, but I don't see why we couldn't add a "commit" / "push" button and pull from git.

The main thing we'll add to KiCad aside from browser version is shareable footprint/symbol libraries (private, public etc.), and organizations (with their own libs etc.). We're not 100% clear on the details yet.

If you have the time reach out to me at viktor dot vaczi at emergence-engineering.com, I'd love to hear what you need.
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Yeah, this is not optimized to mobile yet. My Iphone 13 pro did open once, didn't check further. Sometimes it works if you open it on a new tab ( memory issues ).
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
It's on the "roadmap", someday I'll take some time to take a look at the autorouting situtation. I have a few ideas.
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
To my former self two days ago: if you work almost a year on something take two days to polish a demo.
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
I love that too, the sad part is that ~30% of our visitors ( from Plausible ) are on Safari which is... Not good :) No threads for ya there. At least it works.

Yes! That's the plan for "marketing". And yes, we'll have to usual "follow" features ( without the popups etc which doesn't really suit your usecase ), chat ( maybe voice chat? ).

Thanks!!
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Yea, it sounds worse than it felt in that light lol. You have a point. In hindsight I should've taken a day or two for writing a good copy, I was just very impatient and wanted to push this out.

To be fair, this is not "the project" yet, just a first preview. I'm an engineer, doing things like this is "work", optimizing the bundle size is fun. Sorry.
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Yea, it makes sense. JLC already own EasyEDA, it's an interesting matchup for sure.
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
You're wrong! It was two prompts! Jokes aside, you're right. I wanted to have something up quickly. Before the real launch ( and not just this demo ) I'll write one by hand, I'm against AI written copy / blogposts, just could not find the headspace to focus.

Again, thanks for the feedback, I'll take it!
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Nope, not at all. This is the original KiCad sources with some modifications to make it run in a browser. As far as I know kicanvas renders PCBs, we can do the whole workflow ( create a schematic => pcb => DRC checks, exports etc ).
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
To open a demo board click "Open" in the Projects/Demo board section then "Open in PCB Editor" at demo.kicad_pcb in Files.

Next time I'll make a smoother demo...
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Yea, I'll add it in the next deploy. Thanks! Right now it's about ~30 MB for the big app ( 2 editors + footprint + symbol ).
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
thanks! one thing we did not port is the plugin system: it's quite hard to run python on the web ( AFAIK pyodide is not enough here ) and I've heard that it will be deprecated in the next version.

The KiCad editor's state is accessible from the web app, we'll do some kind of plugin system like Figma's or just implement these functions as an overlay. We'll see, thanks for the tip!
ViktorEE
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Happy to answer any questions & feel free to reach out ( email in my profile )!
ViktorEE
·26 giorni fa·discuss
KiCad web port, with real time collaboration. I've been working on it for the last ~6 months on and off, I have some help now. It's close, we're launching in a few weeks ( hopefully this one ).

It was an interesting project since there were so many unknowns, like can we really turn an offline desktop app into a collaborative one, can it be fast enough, can we port the graphics parts. It turns out you can! I have a semi-vibe coded landing page now, you can sign up to get into the alpha cohort: https://www.pcbjam.com/
ViktorEE
·5 mesi fa·discuss
The way I've solved this issue with a long running build script is to have a logging scripts which redirects all outputs into a file and can be included with ``` # Redirect all output to a log file (re-execs script with redirection) source "$(dirname "$0")/common/logging.sh" ``` at the start of a script.

Then when the script runs the output is put into a file, and the LLM can search that. Works like a charm.
ViktorEE
·7 mesi fa·discuss
That's a neat idea! To be honest my brain is overflowing with ideas too, right now I want to just bring all the apps one. Or... Actually just bring the layout editor up first :) I'm trying hard to live in the present...
ViktorEE
·7 mesi fa·discuss
I did check kicanvas, but I didn't know about circutsnips, I had the same idea for years! It's great!