IEEE Spectrum July, 2014 - 24

resources_HANDs oN

jul 2014

NorTH AMerIcAN

at the moment. In any event, Upverter makes it
very easy to jump to a given part's data sheet to
figure out the ground truth-and it also allows
you to quickly find vendors and to check the
availability and prices of components.
Another pleasant discovery was that Upverter
includes more than 500 open-source circuits
from Sparkfun. There's no easy way yet to search
this set for the particular circuit you're interested
in. Still, this collection is a big plus for Upverter if
you're a Sparkfun fan.
I especially liked Upverter's board-layout
editor, which I found both intuitive and surprisingly responsive. Only rarely did I feel that
I had to wait because of delays with Upverter's
servers. That's not to say that the software is
perfect by any means, but I suspect all layout editors have their quirks. And Upverter's
price-value proposition is certainly good, the
service being free for open-source circuits
and boards, following the business model of
places like GitHub, which charges only those
who want to keep their work private. (The other
Web-based electronic-design services generally do the same.)
Upverter also has integrated printed-circuitboard manufacturing, but I suspect this offering
was slapped on as an experiment, because little information is provided to potential customers about the boards they'd be getting, and the
prices aren't at all competitive. Upverter makes it
easy enough, though, to export the needed files if
you want to use another PC-board manufacturer,
so this shortcoming isn't a significant drawback.

sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

DeFT DeSiGn: Upverter provides Web-based
tools for editing schematic diagrams [right] and
for laying out printed-circuit boards [left]-all at
no cost for open-source projects.

As a test, I designed a small board for an
overlay display system for a first-person video
project I'm working on. I exported the manufacturing files, and (after adjusting file names
to accommodate the different naming conventions) had it fabricated through OSH Park. And
I was delighted to see that the three boards I
received 12 days later for US $7 each came
out just fine.
Having said so many positive things about
Upverter, I should also admit that I'm probably
not ready to use it for more than an occasional experiment at this point. The worry that this start-up
could suddenly disappear looms too large in my
mind. But that concern would evaporate if there
were an easy way to convert an Upverter project
into a form that traditional electronic-design software like EAGLE or KiCad could import.
Upverter does provide open-source code
that can translate schematic diagrams in this
way, but translating board layouts so that they
can be read and modified by other layout editors
is not yet possible. Perhaps the programmers
at Upverter-or other open-source developers-
will tackle that job sometime soon. If so, I suspect many more people will start designing
electronic circuitry using nothing more than a
browser and a little help from their online friends.
-DaviD SchneiDer

david schNeider (2)

circuit was a simple through-hole type. In desperation, I sought out a tutorial and found a few
cryptic YouTube videos from EasyEDA with no
narration at all. That was enough to steer me
in other directions.
PCBWeb didn't offer much in the way of tutorials either, and its part library contained just a
small number of generic components. Perhaps
the service is just so intuitive, I thought in hopeful
anticipation, that there's no real need for tutorials.
Sad to say, that wasn't the case. And to the extent
I could operate its schematic and PC-board editors, I found them to be really slow-an irritating
reminder that the software was on some distant
and rather pokey server.
123D Circuits (formerly Circuits.io, before
it was purchased by Autodesk) works much
better. Indeed, for my simple needs, its
PC-board layout editor would probably do
just fine. 123D Circuits' schematic editor was,
however, a disappointment. After you specify a
connection, the editor draws the corresponding line where it decides the line should go,
and often its choices are just plain ugly. So I
can't see how someone could create even a
modestly pleasing schematic with it.
After such experiences, it came as a great
relief to discover Toronto-based Upverter, a
start-up that garnered support from the seed
accelerator YCombinator in 2011. Upverter
offers nice tutorials describing how to use its
application, certainly enough to get somebody
going. Its parts library is ample, if a little rough in
terms of the quality of the information it contains

http://www.Circuits.io http://sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2014