"Design electronic circuit boards with code."
By using code instead of graphical user interfaces, atopile finally brings design reuse, version control, and automation to hardware design. atopile is a new language + toolchain to design electronic circuit boards with code.
Founded by Timothée Peter, Narayan Powderly, & Matt Wildoer
The Problem
The atopile team loves designing hardware. But existing design tools are slowing them down. The key reason is that in hardware design, everything is done manually: Electronic schematics are drawn by hand, files are exported through a series of clicks, and circuit boards are validated for weeks on the test bench. When systems become complex, this process becomes hugely time-consuming and error-prone.
Imagine writing an entire complex software program using only assembly code. This is what designing hardware feels like today.
The Solution
atopile is a new programming language to describe electronics with code. Instead of drawing the product itself, you can now capture your product requirements using atopile source code. From there, their compiler builds and validates the product manufacturing files for you. Not only is this faster and more reliable but it also lets you use advanced software development tools such as code editors, git, GitHub, GitLab, Continuous Integration, and copilot to design hardware.
After launching on Hacker News and getting hundreds of downloads, they have seen a glimpse of an exciting future: their users have created new designs in atopile, used GitHub for version control, shared their work on atopile's Package Manager, and used Continuous Integration to generate their manufacturing files automatically. Their most active users have also made contributions to their codebase, which atopile is super thankful for!
Early on, the team decided to make atopile open-core. Their goal is to create a new industry standard for describing hardware. With an open-core approach, their users have guaranteed access to their code. atopile's plan is to generate revenue with enterprise-targeted features, in a model similar to GitLab.
atopile's code is on GitHub here and they have up-to-date docs here.
Learn More
🌐 Visit www.atopile.io to learn more
💻 Do you love programming, git, and electronics? Use atopile to design your next circuit board!
❓ Know test teams, firmware engineers, validation teams, or people who need repetitive designs quickly? Make the intro!
👥 Follow atopile on LinkedIn, GitHub, and X
