
jstarne1
Hey guys , making projects easier means having the right tools. Ezb does alot, but it can do even more by making simple circuits. This is a new tool that last year was in beta from the autodesk family. It is available now to use online through the Web or installed on a PC as an application for free. Previously circuits was a independent open source group and still follows collaborative effort among other users. They can share circuit designs and even entire pcb designs. Upgraded account are available with additional features. You may want to weight out the services that are best for you.
http://123d.circuits.io/ is the current URL
Screen shots of products
Not trying to be a pain or anything but how is this a tutorial? It's just a bunch of screen grabs of products from AutoDesk with no information on how to use them. I only mention this because I would prefer the forums not to become full of posts labelled as tutorials but are missing a lot of information, or even some information and there are a fair few posts mounting up which are the beginnings of a tutorial but that's it and they haven't been touched in months. This will make new members a little uncertain when it comes to the quality of the help, advice and tutorials on offer from the EZ-Robot community.
Hope that hasn't caused any offence.
I dream of a forum where the new guy doesn't ask " how do I wire this circuit" or " please draw this circuit for me" , instead this is a DIY solution.
There is no tutorial or amount of tutorials which will stop new (or even existing) members of the community asking questions. There are tutorials which you and other members of the community can link to which answers those questions and saves re-writing everything over and over. If tutorials are missing information this will only confuse people more.
I hope you understand where I'm coming from.
It seems like I'm always building little circuits to add the functions to something. Just over the past few days I had been struggling with adding an extra lamp and socket that is piggybacked off and existing lamp in a controlled lamp circuit in a pinball machine. Controlled lamps on most pinball machines are wired in a matrix design. I wanted a spotlight to come on and shine on something at the same time that an under playfield lamp comes on that shows a shot to make. Anyway, just adding the spotlight and wiring it to the under playfield socket didn't do the trick and it caused a lot of other lights in the matrix to turn on and off at the wrong times. The added light was confusing the computer that was controlling the matrix I think. To make a long story short (too late) after several failed attempts all I had to do was add a series of blocking diodes to the added lamp. One across the feed wires and one more in each of the feed wire but in different directions. With a tool like you have pointed to and knowledge of how to use it things like this would be much easier to figure out. I like the idea that you can run simulations and even order a board to be made. I have a lot of home made project boards with circuits I've built in pinball games and my B9 robot that I'd love to have made into a more professional looking boards.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. I'm looking forward to seeing your steps on how to use this tool.
@Rich, I'd also love to see more about the program you mentioned; ExpressPCB. I think I looked at once but didn't have time to work through the learning curve, got a but frustrated and put it aside. I guess I need to just sit sown sometime and soldier through this kind of thing. *sick*
After having a good nose around circuits.io the two programs, while similar do have big differences. Circuits.io is more tailored to arduino though with it's simulated circuits and simulated arduino.
My concern with it is the fact it is not really a monitored/moderated source so downloading a circuit may have a chance of being a bad circuit that could have the potential to destroy your EZ-B. Sure that is worst case but the potential is there so always use caution