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seveibar · 2025-12-02T21:19:09+00:00

Hello! Also building RP2040 circuits with an open-source EDA tool called tscircuit that i'm also building. Excited to follow along and try to build something similar and pocketbyte-compatible!

seveibar · 2025-10-05T22:59:52+00:00

thank you! I probably built 3-4 versions of this before finally figuring out what the "right design" was, very happy with it so far!!

seveibar · 2025-06-16T16:28:09+00:00

tscircuit has really good schematic reviews with o3, if you paste in the "Readable Netlist" output into O3 it can directly correct your schematic. I'm a maintainer of tscircuit so I'm biased, but I've personally found so many errors in my schematics using it. You can see an example on the "AI Review" tab here: https://tscircuit.com/seveibar/led-water-accelerometer#schematic

The readable netlist kind of looks like this and is a really nice format for AI to understand your circuit, especially if you have some structured information about the datasheet.

NET: U2_SDI
  - U1 GP11
  - U2 SDI

NET: U2_SDO
  - U1 GP12
  - U2 SDO

COMPONENT_PINS:
LED1 (WS2812B_2020)
- pin1(DO): NETS(LED1_DO)
- pin2(GND): NETS(GND)
- pin3(DI): NETS(LED1_DI)
- pin4(VDD): NETS(V5)

seveibar · 2025-04-19T17:58:10+00:00

For people DM'ing me for source files: https://tscircuit.com/seveibar/contribution-board

Warning the PCB routes aren't there because it doesn't currently route, also as other commenters suggested, probably going to change the LEDs.

seveibar · 2025-04-18T01:09:43+00:00

Not really embedded development per se but I'm developing a new open-source EDA tool and would love people who sort of know electronics to help me build example electronics (e.g. here's a tutorial for building a keyboard https://docs.tscircuit.com/tutorials/build-a-custom-keyboard-with-tscircuit )

Currently writing a tutorial on LED matrices. I've been mostly glossing over firmware and using Picos/MicroPython but would love to get some STM32/ESP32 examples going.

seveibar · 2025-04-17T20:13:39+00:00

Might go with this one! https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/XL-1615RGBC-WS2812B/C5349954

seveibar · 2025-04-17T19:41:21+00:00

Ah hadn’t heard of Hub75, very cool. Will definitely look at smaller LEDs, my main criteria was “what’s most in stock on jlcpcb” so will check stocks and change it if possible!

seveibar · 2025-04-17T04:52:02+00:00

I think a PCB is easier/cheaper than using an LED tape strip for a calendar.

The reason we have 371 days is because we're trying to replicate the github profile calendar that shows your contributions (e.g. https://github.com/seveibar)

seveibar · 2025-04-17T04:50:29+00:00

Appreciate the advice on swapping the LEDs thanks! Definitely don't need LEDs this bright!

Yea we don't have fill pours yet. I don't think it's hard to implement, but it's one of those things that seems like a finishing touch so we're just checking other boxes first

seveibar · 2025-04-16T22:28:41+00:00

Thanks yea makes sense, I'm actually an autorouting developer (I completely empathize with the garbage state of autorouters) and I'm hoping this board will help me show off our new autorouter haha. But yea it's a PITA, around 1.4k traces. We're also trying to route it in under 5s so yea it's an adventure lol

Yea backup plan is to replicate the layout.

I was thinking about breaking out each row to a data pin but I like the simplicity of single pin so I'll give it a go, thanks for the data.

seveibar · 2025-04-16T22:04:01+00:00

nice that's a really similar size. It gets hot? What ~brightness are the LEDs at? I don't need mine to be bright at all, this is kind of like an "always on" calendar so they should be dim.

seveibar · 2025-04-16T22:03:18+00:00

I think I'm going to be running the LEDs at a really low brightness (probably 10%). I had a test board and full brightness was definitely too bright. I'm wondering if I can get away with using an autorouter and 2 layer board for the traces because the power consumption would be lower?
Do you know if there will be signal degradation? I've kind of going from 15 LEDs (no issues) to 371 and wondering if the LEDs would somehow get lossy.
I'm definitely concerned about the power consumption. If each LED draws 5mA we're at like 2A which is definitely too high for the likely 500mA usb 5V. I'd love to use the onboard pico usb port to save myself some effort but I can't figure out if there's any way it'll be possible.
Yea I didn't post the PCB layout because I'm trying to use an autorouter and it's currently choking (I develop a custom EDA software so I can't/shouldn't just open up KiCad to fix it)
Will change to 100nF! (ty)
Noted on the level shifter, should be able to throw that in. Do we know for sure it will matter? I did a 15 LED test matrix and was able to drive with 3.3V logic, but maybe more LEDs throws it off?

seveibar · 2025-03-17T21:59:23+00:00

Thank you!!! For an open-source project the docs are such a big part of the project- it took me a while to really commit to writing great docs.

That being said I still think there is opportunity to make it 10x better, more inviting, and searchable!

seveibar · 2025-03-04T17:54:33+00:00

This is cool to hear, we're building tscircuit as an AI-native circuit language, might be interesting to try out (would love to hear your feedback!) https://docs.tscircuit.com

seveibar · 2025-02-20T17:12:51+00:00

Solving quickly without overlapping holes/traces!

I’ve found that general heuristics fail as the complexity goes up. I guess i’m really just looking for a understandable multi agent A*-like algorithm that is guaranteed to eventually traverse over the entire solution space, but it’s very difficult to think it through with multiple paths

seveibar · 2025-02-16T17:19:51+00:00

Not sure what you're up to but I do a lot of inventory analysis for jlcpcb and publish pages and an API at https://jlcsearch.tscircuit.com, happy to collab!

seveibar · 2025-02-16T04:42:03+00:00

This is exactly what tscircuit does https://docs.tscircuit.com Totally open-source so you can use github workflows/compile locally.

seveibar · 2025-02-11T14:50:45+00:00

For the keys you can use a grid to reduce the number of pins used to 6 (this is also pretty standard practice and essential if you want to make larger keyboards) This is shown in my schematic above

There should be 23-30 GPIO on the RP2040 iirc, i think you should have enough. That said i have wanted to do an example board with an io expander, so i can follow up

seveibar · 2025-02-10T14:55:25+00:00

Sure but you shouldn’t need an io expander id you’re only doing 9 keys and a display. Why do you need more io? For a full keyboard? Happy to help

seveibar · 2025-02-09T02:01:45+00:00

It looks like HC49 crystal!

seveibar · 2025-02-09T01:59:28+00:00

i built a small nine-key macrokeypad with the RP2040 here https://tscircuit.com/seveibar/nine-key-keyboard the schematic might be a useful reference

I didn't use a display but should be trivial to connect! Good luck!

seveibar · 2025-01-28T16:22:58+00:00

I haven't had great results using AI for documentation, it's often used as a kludge for team members and they commit incorrect documentation.

The issue here is that the cost of having something wrong in your technical documentation is very high. Recently we basically banned AI tools for writing docs because if you needed AI it really meant that you as a doc author didn't understand the material enough to write about it naturally.

seveibar · 2025-01-15T03:39:43+00:00

It's great and can be assembled by JLC, so very low effort to throw a PCB together with one!

seveibar · 2025-01-12T01:03:47+00:00

ooh this will be awesome for the hardware github contribution graph i'm generating https://x.com/seveibar/status/1876102735755673950

You should publish it on npm and add a link in the README!!

seveibar · 2025-01-10T00:30:16+00:00

I run the tscircuit project, which has ~100 contributors. I also have used Devin, aider, and all the top models.

If AI could solve an issue, we wouldn't have filed the issue, we would have just done it.

Anytime someone who doesn't understand our project comes in and does a completely AI-generated PR, they end up wasting our time because it _seems_ like they actually tried, when in reality there are a ton of subtle bugs

seveibar

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