Pulling into Fritzing station *t00t t00t*

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USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger
https://www.adafruit.com/products/390

VCNL4010 Proximity/Light sensor
https://www.adafruit.com/products/466

Triple-axis Accelerometer+Magnetometer (Compass) Board – LSM303
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1120

Touch screen breakout board (0.5mm FPC)
https://www.adafruit.com/product/334

Standalone 5-Pad Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout – AT42QT1070
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1362

Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – I2C interface – PCA9685
https://www.adafruit.com/products/815

Adafruit HUZZAH CC3000 WiFi Breakout
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1510
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1469

MicroSD card breakout board+
https://www.adafruit.com/products/254

DS1307 Real Time Clock breakout board kit
https://www.adafruit.com/products/264

Bluefruit EZ-Key – 12 Input Bluetooth HID Keyboard Controller
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1535

Adafruit 24-Channel 12-bit PWM LED Driver – SPI Interface – TLC5947
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1429

L3GD20H Triple-Axis Gyro Breakout Board
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1032

Adafruit 12-Channel 16-bit PWM LED Driver – SPI Interface – TLC59711
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1455

RA8875 Driver Board for 40-pin TFT Touch Displays – 800×480 Max
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1590

DS3231 Precision RTC FeatherWing – RTC Add-on For Feather Boards
https://www.adafruit.com/products/3028

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Get on the Fritzing train at the Adafruit Fritzing library
https://github.com/adafruit/Fritzing-Library

Let me just start by saying this is about one of my favorite type of blogs out there. I love reading and watching others learn, while sharing their own experiences and tips with software and/or the lessons they learn along the way. This post by Allan Schwartz for the whatimadetoday blog has all of the above, using one of the maker community’s prized pieces of open-source software, Fritzing.

I have been having loads of fun designing boards and having these boards fabricated for next to nothing. Let me explain how.

In a previous blog post — My First Homemade PCB (or: Why Next Time I’m Ordering My PCB Online) — Amir wrote about his experience learning Eagle, the preferred ECAD tool for professionals. Since Eagle requires an expensive licensing fee, I researched other options.

Because it’s free and designed for hobbyists, I decided on Fritzing. Fritzing lets you go all the way from breadboard design, to schematic design, to board layout, and even to board fabrication. In addition, I’ve found a board house that fabricates 10 small boards for $5 — pcbway.com.

With this new found knowledge, I now am ready to take many of my breadboard designs and “complete” them by fabbing a PCB.

Read more.

On the Fritzing GitHub, Kjell Morgenstern announces they are taking over maintenance of Fritzing:

Hello,

As announced in #3435 , I am taking over maintenance of Fritzing for André. My C++ / Embedded development / Robotics background is a good start, but I am not alone. Together with the help of the people at Aisler and @ovidiub13, a developer with KDE background, we plan to release a fresh build of Fritzing in the near future.

So, this is a short term roadmap, limited to the minimal things to get things rolling.

April/May 2019

1. Add CI for Linux, Windows and Mac targets
2. We will create a test release 0.9.4alpha , since toolchains and many other things have changed, and we need to verify that processes still work on a all platforms.
3. Reduce the number of open issues, by closing issues which are too old, no longer valid, or just to low in priority as “No fix, please re-open if you disagree”.
4. After alpha, we will roll out 0.9.4b to the download section.
5. Update developer wiki: Align better with git-flow, rebase all pull requests before merge, only accept PR if CI is green, check basic coding style…

June/July 2019
8. (ongoing) Reduce the number of open issues…
9. Prepare 0.9.5 release, work on new features/feature requests
10. Add black box and unit test infrastructure

August/September 2019
13. Create 0.9.5 beta
14. Release 0.9.5 stable

Thanks to Aisler’s sponsorship, we can hopefully look to updates to our favorite diagram program.

Are you a Fritzing fan? Let us know in the comments below.

Have you ever used electronic circuit diagram software like Fritzing and wished it suggested wiring options for components? a research team from Dartmouth and other universities has heard you.

We propose autocomplete for the design and development of virtual breadboard circuits using software prototyping tools. With our system, AutoFritz, a user inserts a component into the virtual breadboard, and it automatically provides a user with a list of suggested components. These suggestions complete or extend the electronic functionality of the inserted component to save the user’s time and reduce circuit error.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of autocomplete, we implemented our system on Fritzing, a popular open source breadboard circuit prototyping software, used by novice makers. Our autocomplete suggestions were implemented based upon schematics from datasheets for standard components, as well as how components are used together from over 4000 circuit projects from the Fritzing community.

We report the results of a controlled study with 16 participants, evaluating the effectiveness of autocomplete in the creation of virtual breadboard circuits, and conclude by sharing insights and directions for future research.

A video on the project is below and the whole project is in their published paper (PDF).

After many requests and years of waiting, Fritzing finally got a simulator!

The primary purpose of the simulator is to teach electronics to beginners, and its current capabilities are very limited (only analysis of DC circuits). However, it is fully functional, easy to use, and works on the breadboard and schematic view. In addition, it performs some checks to see if any parts are working outside their specifications.

The simulator is only available in Fritzing 0.9.10 or later versions. It is disabled by default. To enable it, go to Edit->Preferences (or ⌘+, File->Preferences in macOS), select the “Beta Features” tab, and check the “enable simulator” checkbox. Fritzing will save this option, and you will only need to activate the simulator once. Of course, you can still disable it anytime in the preferences dialog.

After the simulator is enabled, you will see a simulate button next to the share button at the bottom bar.

The simulator is still in beta status and could have bugs that let Fritzing crash. Please help us improve it by reporting them at the issue tracker.

See the announcement post and download the latest version.