alt Hacker NewsI 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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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.
For small stuff, sure. For something with more components I don't think it's ever gonna be useful. Routing a pcb is an np-hard problem and, imho, no AI has enough actual thinking capability to make a good job out of it.
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.
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?
What do you to get the case? I use build123d with Python and the results are pretty good!
Im surprised by how bad LLMs are with SVGs but somehow are oke-ish with CAD and other weird files.
What harness have you been using for EDA/CAD stuff?
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
> Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print.
Can you elaborate on this? What did you use to "design" it?
Im thinking of getting a 3d printer and would love to explore this intersection a bit more.