easyeda

4 Articles

Easyeda2KiCad: Never Draw A Footprint Again

August 8, 2023 by 38 Comments

What if I told you that you might never need to draw a new footprint again? Such is my friend’s impression of the tool that she’s shown me and I’m about to show you in turn, having used this tool for a few projects, I can’t really disagree!

We all know of the JLCPCB/LCSC/EasyEDA trio, and their integration makes a lot of sense. You’re expected to design your boards in EasyEDA, order the components on LCSC, and get the boards made by JLCPCB. It’s meant to be a one-stop shop, and as you might expect, there’s tight integration between all three. If there wasn’t, you’d be tempted to step outside of the ecosystem, after all.

But like many in this community, I use KiCad, and I don’t expect to move to a different PCB design suite — especially not a cloud one. Still, I enjoy using the JLCPCB and LCSC combination in the hobby PCB market as it stands now, and despite my KiCad affinity, it appears that EasyEDA can help me after all!

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EasyEDA Hack Chat With Dillon He

June 17, 2019 by 7 Comments

Join us Wednesday at 5:00 PM Pacific time for the Easy EDA Hack Chat with Dillon He!

Note the different time than our usual Hack Chat slot! Dillon will be joining us from China.

Since the birth of electronic design automation in the 1980s, the universe of products to choose from has grown tremendously. Features from schematic editing to circuit simulation to PCB design and autorouting can be found in every permutation imaginable, and you’re sure to find something that fits your needs, suits your budget, and works on your platform.

Dillon He started EasyEDA back in 2010 with Eric Cui, and since then the cloud-based EDA tool has become a popular choice. From working across teams to its “run anywhere” capabilities, EasyEDA has become the go-to tool for hundred of thousands of designers. Dillon will drop by the Hack Chat to answer all your questions about EasyEDA — how it started, where it is now, and what we can expect in the future.

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, June 19 at 5:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

 

EasyEDA Two Years Later

December 5, 2017 by 47 Comments

Some people want everything on the cloud, while others refuse to put even the smallest scrap of data on the Internet. Most of us fall somewhere in between. A few years ago, we talked about a few cloud-based PCB layout programs including one called EasyEDA. We were impressed because it was a full package: schematic capture, simulation, and PCB layout. It was free to use, although they would give you a quote for producing your boards, though you were under no obligation to buy them. Of course things change in two years, so if you are curious how EasyEDA is doing, [Yahya Tawil] posted an in-depth review.

Some of the new features include an autorouter and the ability to order parts from a BOM directly, not just PCBs. The cloud aspect is handy, not only because you don’t have to install and update software to use it anywhere, but because it is very natural to collaborate with others on projects. We did notice, though, that the autorouter can run in the cloud, or you can download and run it local because it apparently loads the server significantly.

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540 PCBs Make A Giant LED Cube

June 2, 2017 by 21 Comments

Just about anyone can make a simple LED cube. But what if you want to make a 1-meter cube using 512 LEDs? [Hari] wanted to do it, so he created two different kinds of LED boards using EasyEDA. There are 270  of each type of board, for a total of 540 (there are only 512 LEDs, so we guess he got some spares due to how the small boards panelized). The goal is to combine these boards to form a cube measuring over three feet on each side.

To simplify wiring, the boards are made to daisy chain like a cordwood module. However, to get things to line up, each column of LED boards have to rotate 90 degrees. You can see several videos about the project below.

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