wow yet more Arduino/Processing stuff
It would seem that not a day will pass at the moment that the Arduino/Processing ecosystem doesn’t expand with a cool new app/hardware update/library/whatever. The latest to come into range of my Radar is Fritzing, an open source circuit sketching application, again aimed at artists/designers, it allows you to draw your breadboarded design on to a virtual breadboard and it will then work out your schematic, and a circuit board layout, and from that export to an Eagle file for sending off to a prototyping house (such as www.batchpcb.com/) to be made into a permenant board, meaning you have a robust device.
I won’t pretend the software is perfect, it’s still in alpha with all the reliablility issues that entails, the 64 bit Linux version didn’t run at all, and the 32 bit seems to have its share of bugs too. However the interface itself seems to be very intuitive I already have a preliminary layout for an Arduino sheild I am planning. The only major problems at the moment that I can see is a lack of facility for editing the board layout, adding extra pads etc, and a lack of pre-built components. Though the components are only .svg graphics with attached xml files, and the team promise that the priority for the next release will be the development of a built in editor to make defining new bits a breeze.
As ever I will furnish you with more updates as and when they become available.
