/atopile

Design circuit boards with code! ✨ Get software-like design reuse 🚀, validation, version control and collaboration in hardware; starting with electronics ⚡️

Primary LanguagePythonApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

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Logo atopile

📖 What Is atopile?

atopile is a tool to build electronic circuit boards with code.

🗣️ Join Us On Discord

What's your story in electronics? What would you like us to build? Come talk on discord.

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⚡️ato Code Examples

Simple Examples:

Voltage Divider

from "generics/resistors.ato" import Resistor

module VoltageDivider:
    signal top
    signal out
    signal bottom

    r_top = new Resistor
    r_top.package = "R0402"

    r_bottom = new Resistor
    r_bottom.package = "0402"

    top ~ r_top.p1; r_top.p2 ~ out
    out ~ r_bottom.p1; r_bottom.p2 ~ bottom

    r_total: resistance
    v_in: voltage
    v_out: voltage
    i_q: current

    assert v_in * r_bottom.value / (r_top.value + r_bottom.value) within v_out
    assert v_in / (r_bottom.value + r_top.value) within i_q

RP2040 Blinky Circuit

import RP2040Kit from "rp2040/RP2040Kit.ato"
import LEDIndicatorRed from "generics/leds.ato"
import LDOReg3V3 from "regulators/regulators.ato"
import USBCConn from "usb-connectors/usb-connectors.ato"

module Blinky:
    micro_controller = new RP2040Kit
    led_indicator = new LEDIndicatorRed
    voltage_regulator = new LDOReg3V3
    usb_c_connector = new USBCConn

    usb_c_connector.power ~ voltage_regulator.power_in
    voltage_regulator.power_out ~ micro_controller.power
    micro_controller.gpio13 ~ led_indicator.input
    micro_controller.power.gnd ~ led_indicator.gnd

    led_indicator.v_in = 3.3volt +/-10%

Full Projects

Checkout out the servo drive project or the logic card project.

🔨 Getting Started

Find our documentation and getting started video.

atopile is on pypi.org: https://pypi.org/project/atopile/

Most Basic Installation

atopile requires python3.11 or later, which you can install using your package manager or from python.org.

Then just pip install atopile and you're good to go!

❓ Why Atopile?

The objective of atopile is to help push forward these paradigms from the software world to hardware, mainly these points:

  • Intelligent Design Capture: Define hardware specifications like ratios and tolerances in code, enabling precise control and easy reuse of designs.
  • Version Control Integration: Use git to manage design changes, facilitating collaboration and ensuring each iteration is thoroughly reviewed and validated.
  • Continuous Integration (CI): Implement CI to guarantee high-quality, compliant designs with every commit, represented by a green checkmark for assurance.

Describing hardware with code might seem odd at first glance. But once you realize it introduces software development paradigms and toolchains to hardware design, you'll be hooked, just like we've become.

Code can capture the intelligence you put into your work. Imagine configuring not the resistance values of a voltage divider, but its ratio and total resistance, all using physical units and tolerances. You can do this because someone before you described precisely what this module is and described the relationships between the values of the components and the function you care about. Now instead imagine what you can gain from reusing a buck design you can merely configure the target voltage and ripple of. Now imagine installing a servo drive the same way you might numpy.

Version controlling your designs using git means you can deeply validate and review changes a feature at a time, isolated from impacting others' work. It means you can detangle your organisation and collaborate on an unprecedented scale. We can forgo half-baked "releases" in favor of stamping a simple git-hash on our prototypes, providing an anchor off which to associate test data and expectations.

Implementing CI to test our work ensures both high-quality and compliance, all summarised in a green check mark, emboldening teams to target excellence.

🔍 Discover what people build

Browse and submit your modules at packages.atopile.io