Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware

https://www.flux.ai/blog/ultra-librarian-joins-flux-to-take-the-hard-out-of-hardware

by rock_hard • 2 years ago

60 27 2 years ago

I have not found Flux to be particularly useful. For schematic design and PCB layout KiCAD is my go-to. Flux was difficult to use and the purported AI assistance was non-existent.

polalavik• 2 years ago

same I’ve tried to use flux multiple times and there’s just not an intuitive thing about it. I could barely draw a schematic.

I should add that I’m somewhat experienced as well. I’ve successfully designed 6 layer boards with blind via, BGAs, Bluetooth trace antennas before trying flux. Still have no clue how to use flux.

swamp404• 2 years ago

Digikey has made Ultra Librarian famous. I wouldn't be surprised if they were connected somehow. About 80% of Digikey components have models. About 80% of those are Ultra Librarian models. About 95% of the models are correct, which is a lot better than a few years ago.

SV_BubbleTime• 2 years ago

All of it is better than a few years ago.

I needed something with really complex footprint that no one had, I contacted SnapEDA, and for $50 they did a model and footprint in less than a day. Extremely worth the money in that case.

peteforde4• 2 years ago

I spent several months working with Flux, and while I actually generally enjoyed the UI and web-based approach, I had to switch back to KiCAD because there were so many dealbreaking bugs in fundamental features.

The realtime collaboration was just straight up broken; as in, my collaborator would make changes that would not manifest until I refreshed. This is unacceptable.

The PCB tracing was unusable because you could not control the wires and things would appear in strange places. Forget auto-routing... I had trouble just getting it to connect wires.

I could go on at (great) length, but while I genuinely am rooting for the team behind this product, I can't recommend it until they prioritize getting the fundamentals working properly over adding new AI features.

That said, in attempting to work through these issues, I gained a healthy amount of respect for how hard it is to create a viable new entry in this domain. For whatever reason, it often seems culturally normalized to shit on Flux and I think this is toxic and unproductive.

bsder• 2 years ago

Partnering with Ultra Librarian is simply going to make me more inclined to shit on Flux, though. And I don't even know anything about Flux.

These "library managers" like Ultra Librarian and SnapEDA are a pox upon the ecosystem. The symbols and footprints have non-open source licenses, so you nominally can't share them. They simply want to get in the middle of your design so that they can monetize you.

peteforde4• 2 years ago

Damn, I am apparently woefully ignorant of this. As someone who is somehow both intimidated and fatigued of having to track down multiple assets for every item in my BOM, DigiKey's downloadables have been huge win... or so I thought?

How does the licensing issue actually manifest in a practical sense? By what mechanism(s) could this monetization occur? Is this sabre rattling or are small hardware designers actually getting bills for using premade footprints and models?

by_Seeing3• 2 years ago

In Flux, this closed source aspect doesn't exist. Any user can fork and alter any part.

rgovostes2• 2 years ago

I looked into this the other day. SnapEDA says their symbols are CC licensed, though their FAQ reference some kind of license addition that tries to discourage mass redistribution—at the time I couldn’t find the actual text of this addition. Ultra Librarian did not publish any license I could locate.

swamp404• 2 years ago

I don't see how it's possible to beat companies like Altium that have been continually improving the sch and pcb design experience for the last 30 years.

The AI is a cool idea. Maybe as an add-on? An import? A library? Collaboration? IDK, but details like via tenting properties on layer 3 are best left to the experts.

peteforde4• 2 years ago

I think it's a huge mistake for any ecosystem to be impenetrable to new players with fresh ideas.

We see this in the web browser engine space with Chromium.

That's why I find the glee with which prominent EE community types appear to condemn Flux really frustrating. Yes, Flux has big problems and a huge mountain to climb. To me, that's why we should encourage them. There are a million easier things those folks could be attempting, so shitting on them for trying to bring a new perspective is self-defeating.

As for Altium, I haven't used it because it's very expensive and tied up in a larger enterprise ecosystem. It doesn't make a ton of sense for solo or small-team designers to use a tool heavily influenced and full of tooling for use by the world's largest companies.

That's why I found Flux so compelling; my partner and I actually want to use the "Figma for electronics", if such a thing can be provided without critical bugs.

by_Seeing3• 2 years ago

This is one of the more measured takes I've read about our tool. I'm a product designer building Flux and I'd love to hear more about your issues. If you're interested in helping us climb that mountain faster, hit me up at brooks at flux.ai

Also, we're working fast to solve some of the issues you describe. Have you tried us recently?

peteforde4• 2 years ago

Kerry was really amazing to work through issues with. He took my feedback like a champ and was able to get a number of issues addressed. I made it clear to him that I wasn't giving up on Flux, but that I had to do the responsible thing for my project and would check back in.

I transitioned my product to KiCAD in late December. I'll definitely check out how things are going when I start my next product later this year.

delfinom• 2 years ago

Entry into the domain is hard because EE is incredibly mature in western countries.

By that I mean most work is heavily regulated, either defense, aerospace or industrial goods that must meet safety certs. Schematic and PCB design flow are heavily impacted and you can't go all tech startup go fast and break things on it.

Anything that's mass market consumer goods these days is outsourced to a shop in Asia or even Eastern Europe to design. At that point their labor is cheap that you don't care what they use.

cyberax2• 2 years ago

Now it needs to be integrated with atopile.

It'd be nice to be able to describe the circuit as simple code, compile it, and then get it in the mail a couple of days later.

swamp404• 2 years ago

That looks cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Q0XVpfW3Y

Bluebirt• 2 years ago

WOW. These two projects must be the most esoteric hardware projects out there. Why should anyone use code for hardware? This flux thing seems only to be useful for simple hobby projects.

cyberax2• 2 years ago

Because designing hardware is a mess. Especially if you want to tweak designs a bit.

I'd love to be able to design circuits the way I can do with 3D printing.

dpcx• 2 years ago

Having never heard of Ultra Librarian, I thought this was somehow related to https://justgetflux.com/ and that they'd made a switch from doing color changing to hardware.

Ultra Librarian joins Flux to take the hard out of hardware

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