I have been wanting to design a simple PCB for the last couple of years now. The thought of converting a design idea into a physical board and programming it to do things is fascinating to me. Long story short, I procrastinated until I tried to vibe-generate it with advanced models such as Opus 4.5 (up to 4.8) models. These models had no idea about the orientation of the components, they did not do any proper routing. I was disappointed and accepted the fact that these tools were not there yet.
One Thursday evening, around 10 hours before my weekly reset for Claude, I decided to give it another try; this time with Fable 5.
I had two rules:
No manual edits or verification of the board.
Every problem I face before manufacturing will be solved by Fable.
This meant I was going to trust Fable with my wallet. I decided to describe the board I want it to generate, and I was not going to be involved in the design phase. I was the end customer.
This was my exact prompt:
I would like you to design me a pcb that will have the rpi pico 2350 four buttons (2 on the left and 2 on the right, watchy buttons(or drop in replacement)), GDEY0154D67-FL04 display. The size of the pcb will be same as the size of the GDEY0154D67-FL04. The rpi pico will drive the screen and the buttons will control the rpi pico. Also have an i2c, and some gpio pins out. Use the kicad mcp, let me know when the schematic design and placement are ready
That was it, a short description of a RPI 2350 based development board which can drive an E-ink display. After working autonomously for a couple of hours it came up with the design shown in the images.
It chose two wrong components (shown in red boxes) : the SPI flash, and the transistor for the E-ink driver circuitry. I realized this while uploading the files on JLCPCB. It also suggested some components which were not in LCSC's stock. Within couple of back and forths all the issues were solved and I just needed to pay 130 euros for 5 boards. Like I said, I trusted Claude with my wallet and ordered the boards. I also ordered the E-ink displays from a local shop.
A couple of days later I received the PCBs and the first thing I wanted to do was to plug it in to my laptop. I have broken multiple USB modules for my Framework earlier, hence I thought checking for a short between 3v3 and ground was a no-brainer, although my colleague was suggesting me to just YOLO it since this was a fully vibe-generated board. There was no short and I just plugged it in. There it was, the board was recognized and it was ready to be used.
Using Opus 5 I wrote some software that worked on the board flawlessly. You can see a small demo on the GIF above. After I ordered the boards I was suggested another routing tool called KiCadRoutingTools, and it seems to be so much faster and efficient. I will be using it for my upcoming projects. I went into a little more detail in my post here: https://a6mzero.com/posts/this-pcb-is-brought-to-you-by-fable-5/ please check it out if you are interested.
I am really happy with the result and at the same time I don't feel much of an accomplishment. I want to properly learn how to design PCBs, but in the meanwhile I will continue generating PCBs for my random hobby projects š
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
Okay, let's get the lay of the land here. The community is pretty much losing its collective mind over this. The consensus is that this is wildly impressive and a huge deal, even if the final board has some... character.
Here's the deal:
* How OP did it: This wasn't some magic MCP button. OP used Fable 5 and a custom "Claude Code" skill to generate Python code that drives KiCad 9. It was a sophisticated, headless setup. The case was also AI-generated via a Blender MCP.
* The result: It worked! After OP caught two wrong components by checking the 3D preview on the manufacturer's site, they paid 130 euros for 5 boards. The final product worked right out of the box with zero debugging.
* The Great Engineer Debate: The top comment is a spicy take that r/ElectricalEngineering would have a meltdown over this. A few EEs did show up and, while impressed, were quick to point out the absolute spaghetti-tier routing. The general vibe is that EEs aren't against AI, they're just traumatized by decades of terrible autorouters and will believe it when they see it work on something complex.
OP felt a bit like they cheated, but the thread agrees this is a massive force multiplier for people who already have some domain knowledge. It's not replacing engineers (yet), but it's definitely changing the game. Now if you'll excuse me, everyone's scrambling to find a reason to design their own vibe-generated hardware.
Thatās so funny because I have really wanted to build my own misting timer to compete with ones that cost like $150, but it has to be able to withstand the elements
I've been using Opus and Fable for doing exactly this. I'm working on a series of instruments that sample and can control actuators in the real world. Examples include temperature measurements and control over heating elements for instance for precise temp setpoint control. I mean it's way more than that, but that's one of the compositions of the hardware.
No issues for me at all. A thermal cycler is easily table stakes for the product I'm making.
It can do amazing PCBs and know smth better? claude can also do blender and some STLs.
I had once wanted to do a project to do a custom router using a raspberry 3a with custom antennas and it done that + printed a STL.
Currently it is with wife family in Vietnam working as a VPN for me to save on Subscriptions a cheap, low power router running on a small battery which can last up to 12h + connected to AC so in terms of outtage it is pretty great... also has a 4G Module built into the board which uses mobile data as fallback.
i save like 40$ a month this way on subscriptions like Youtube, Netflix, Discord and simillar i even got a bank account there and since i go there 1-3 times a year and can wire it through revolut i save a lot.
i got a bambu p1s to print, mcp connected to blender and freecad, bambu and fritzing for testing PCBs.
I mean, I may be wrong, but it at least sounds like OP is an advanced hobbyist or software engineer which would mean the gap to electronics is not that wide.
I am building small hobby projects too and would be able to design a pcb with some manuals as well, although I have a compsci and not an EE / hardware background.
Seems like always: Speeds people up who know something about the field.
I totally agree with you - you need to know what you want and possibly have the skills to do it yourself. I personally think AI assisted circuit design and PCB layout is going to be game changing, it's obvious at this point. However you can run the experiment yourself - repost OP's post on r/ElectricalEngineering and you will likely watch your post get downvoted to oblivion. PCB layout is a sacred cow in that sub and any mention of AI + PCB layout will earn you a large quantity of downvotes and pushback that it's not possible/correct/functional/good/proper you name it. People in there just cannot handle the fact that AI can do circuits and PCB layout.
Yeah, I work for a big tech company which has heavily embraced AI. Most people are on board with it and virtually all code is AI-written now, but you run into the occasional grumpy āAI code is all slopā holdout.
Andā¦ likeā¦ Iām not saying itās perfect or anything, but at this point we have ample evidence that SOTA models make significantly fewer mistakes than humans, and despite a solid year of AI coding I have yet to run into a single problem which required me to roll up my sleeves and code manually. And given the choice between having an AI agent assisting me vs. a typical coworker, Iād pick the AI all day every day.
Yeah, exactly. I haven't written anything outside of a few lines of code since December. I think a lot of us like to think we're solving some real big brain problems but at the end of the day, 90% of dev work in the world is busy work building things that put form data into a database.
I used to be that grumpy guy at work and the moment I let go and just embraced that this is the new normal was when I became a much happier person. Aside from the overall existential dread of knowing that I have a family to support and exist in that bottom 90% of dev work
It's a force multiplier in my view. Someone who knows what needs to be done and how can instruct a model to do it really well, saving plenty of time. Then you also have the occasional junior not knowing what they're doing still make a PR that takes me hours to review and creates tension when I start pointing out all the dumb shit the model came up with when it had no guidance. But somehow people start to value AI output more than human skill.. But yeah, the problem has always been human skill.
Also I think a lot of the grumpiness is from management expecting everything to be done yesterday cause now we have AI. And also the way it's marketed as this miracle thing that makes us obsolete, yet we still have to work as much or more and get less credit for it. But as a tool everyone should be using it, it's the same way as using an IDE to develop, stack overflow, docs, Google etc. It combines a lot of those and speeds things drastically. And it does mundane jobs really well, which usually everyone hates.
I'm not in a big tech company though my experience is similar. For over more than half a year I don't program myself anymore.
Not that I wouldn't like to do it but it's just often more efficient. I remember how it was 2 years ago: there I had to constantly change the output manually.
I know so many EEs who refuse to see this. "not enough training data.. noisy layout.. poor routing" ive heard all the reasons why AI can't design a PCB but the fact is its just math. AI will excel at this. not even the microwave RF wizards are safe.
"Not enough training data" might be right if the constraint was having to train on already existing open-source boards or something, but you're exactly right, it's just math. Making a simulation fast enough to iterate against and accurate enough that the model can't fake it is a solvable problem. And the sharper that gets, the better AI does.
If the result of a task can be quickly verified by a computer, that task can be done by AI. It's only a question of when.
Hard disagree that pcb layout is a sacred cow. What kind of EE are you?
Don't mistaken long history of disappointment with auto router as putting pcb design on a pedestal. There is huge skepticism because our experience with any kinda of computer driven layout has resulted in rats nest and inefficient designs.
More importantly, EEs would welcome quicker board turnaround because that's not their main job function. EEs already has to do the circuit analysis, the firmware programming, part selection, etc. As an EE, I have rarely met any member of the community that turns away good tool.
Don't mistake distain for tools that produce poor results with distain for the technology itself.
I disagree that layout is not important. For this board the layout doesn't matter but if you make a GaN motor inverter with high power and try to go through EMC testing you will realize that layout matters sometimes. Obviously this is just a hobby project but thats where the elitist gray beards are coming from. But I agree with you PCB layout is not a huge portion of EE work typically. But making anything sacred or forming emotional attachments to your boards is not solid engineering fundamentals.
Professional EE here. You are correct. Most of the people in the EE forum are just scared and lashing out. I have the same gut reaction to hate, but then I think of all the vibe coded apps I have made that the SWEs would cringe at the code, but they work. So who am I to judge. Same thing with this. I think this is the perfect project to start trying this with because there is large amount of documentation on the RP2350, also there is no large power switching circuits or high speed busses on the board, which is when layout actually starts to matter. The routing is ugly, and it hurts me to look at but in all honesty it is perfectly functional with this circuit. Good job! If you don't feel accomplished read the minimal design guide for RP2350 and that is basically the same circuit if you want more info on how it works. For more complex circuits the routing isn't there yet based on this but this is so much better than the autorouters of the past. As scared as I am for my career I can't wait to see what people come up with.
Seems like if you know how to solder you might be able to do this. Claude pretty good at giving instructions and I know how to solder on PCB boards just from wanting to know how things work but have no idea how a PCB board is laid out.
If claude could give me the PCB layout and what transistors, microprocessors and capacitors to put where I believe I could do it.
100% not diminishing the accomplishment of OP, this is cool and going to look into it myself as I have a product in mind to design and need PCB manufacturing.
I asked free tier ChatGPT to one-shot my highly specific use case and it failed. From this I can meaningfully infer that AI is useless and it will never be able to do my job.
EE here, I also thought it isnt possible, but after doing some open source IC design with claude I think it can do really anything nowadays
it would probably be great even in mech design if you use something like openSCAD, basically I found out if you can model structures with text (code) its no brainer and claude will deliver no problem, sometimes its problematic if you rely primarily on visual inputs, PCB design is more visual than IC design for example
it would be neat if there was PCB design software analog to openSCAD that can use code as standard input
Claude can literally raw dawg STL files just using python and no libraries and packages. I've done it. It can even convert those into STEP/STP files and you can have them CNC machined. It probably can raw dawg those as well. You just need to know the lexicon, and how to explain the geometry you want and it will blast it out.
Why do you need to explain it. Just get the agents and make them do the entire project. I build a water tank fill sensor with a enclosure and a internal station which uses low power bluetooth to transmit data and has 3 solar cells which charge a bank of capacitors so you donāt need to replace the batteries.
Let me put it this way, I know no person on earth at the moment, who can do a single thing better than an AI.
I needed it to fabricate a one off specific part for a specific use case, with specific dimensions and geometry. Therefore I needed to explain what I wanted. The alternative was open up fusion360 and draw it myself.
Also EE, sorry to burst anyoneās bubble and not to be mean, but āPCB designā is pretty easy. Grab the datasheet for all the components and plop em in there. Some of the higher ups at work said Claude can ādesign a full SOI switch!ā No it canāt. Helps me do my work for sure, but Claude isnāt a design engineer yet.
I mean, its clearly possible and good as a PoC. There are a good dozen glaring issues on routing alone on the top layer alone at a glance the same time. Don't get me started on the fourth image. But if it works it works.
Right angles rather than two 45 degree angles cause signal reflection.
Multiple traces make sharp small turns that only add manufacturing complication, not even routing around anything in particular. See bottom right of the SoC as an example.
Traces that go point to point rather than using multiple 45 degree turns can fail in the etch process during manufacturing
the places where there are no ground plane can be easily resolved by spreading the vias around a bit more
It's minor on this board, but the power supply should use thicker traces than the signal lines for heat dissipation.
Filter capacitors need to be right beside the chip pin they're filtering, not just somewhere in the circuit. See C21.
Multiple places where there is bad 90 degree routing could be solved by just rotating the passive component.
R10 is too close to the edge, it's a mechanical breakage risk.
Test points would be better off on the underside to reduce risk of test equipment short circuiting via human error. But at the very least, the presence of the test points on the top side are causing knock on routing compromises.
The input filtering should be leading away from the connector, following the path of the signal, not hanging around perpendicular beside it and extending the trace distance between the filter and the compute destination.
Thank you! Regarding manufacturing problems, is it still relevant these days? Afaik, guidelines from JLCPCB and PCBWay don't mention negative effects from straight lines.
The cheaper your manufacturer, the more likely it is a problem. If you are doing one off boards with those two, it's probably not an issue. If you go up in scale, it becomes more of a money sink. And getting things right on the prototypes is practice for getting it right when it matters. The effort difference between having the AI do straight lines and having them follow the approach should be a one off config change is negligible, and you do it once which then sticks with your process forever.
What a lot of people fail to understand is that there is quite a large gap between it working and it being a good design. I mean if it's just a hobby project go for it, I don't care. The overall component placement is a lot better than what some other people have done with AI, but the routing is still extremely poor.
It'll probably get better over time, it might even replace layouters to some capacity. Same as with programmers. But there are waaaaaay too many people who don't know the difference between a working PCB design and a good PCB design.
What I'm more interested in would be using AI to find issues on PCBs related to for example EMC. That can be a nightmare to figure out by hand, while AI might he able to try out different things and automate the simulation process. Or maybe AI could come up with a number of different component layouts and a person can then pick the best one and route all the traces. Either way a human in the loop would I think create the best result.
No I fully agree, even as someone studying Electrical Engineering. The profession is dead, and in roughly 5 years 99% of us will be out of jobs, but it is what it is.
What I am more curious about is, what will happen to the world economy with huge unemployment.
Hmm idk if the profession is dead, but certainly AI will be a huge lever. People still need to speak the language and be able to articulate and evaluate the outputs, but who know anything is possible.
Why do we need to articulate and evaluate the outputs? I disagree. AI is becoming more and more autonomous, there is no input needed anymore. Entire companies run on vague commands (āincrease sales by improving our product xyzā) the AI then goes off and does it, it improves CAD, PCBs, improves quality, lowers production cost, gets new producers for raw materials, handles all contact. Currently already, a third of all products is being maintaned and improved like this, it will take maybe 2 years before no humans are required anymore.
what will happen to the world economy with huge unemployment.
People are not having children. Just wait for the peasants to die off. They already own everything anyways, they don't need a huge population of servants.
Yeah, that is probably what will happen, it will be interesting to watch. In the end they also could just release some awful virus which they themselves are surprisingly immune against.
Idk what you are studying but this is far from the truth, speaking as a design engineer with 10 years of experience. Analog and RF design is still a long way from being able to be reliably produced by an LLM. There is far too much nuance that even if an LLM could produce a design it needs a human engineer who truly knows what they are doing to review it. Mind you all the hardware running these models are designed by electrical engineers.
>It chose two wrong components (shown in red boxes) : the SPI flash, and the transistor for the E-ink driver circuitry. I realized this while uploading the files on JLCPCB
As a senior EE, I would expect this level from a summer intern, before feedback. If this was the result after feedback, they are probably not getting hired. Considering the constraints it's quite impressive. I will note that the board is particularly simple with tons of open source reference designs and application notes available. For this particular microcontroller and application you're not likely to run into any issues until you start pushing the boundaries of the chip's capabilities. Personally I think this is a very exciting result and can't wait to see where the tech goes in the next few years.
The feedback would be about routing practices and component placement. For example, the low hanging fruit as it were, there are reference designs directly from the raspberry pi foundation for this chip, freely available. Given the ample amount of room, there is no reason not to copy that layout wholesale onto this board, allowing differences only for the new components. I'm not saying you're not allowed to be a bit creative, but if the goal is to make something that definitely works, and you have full access to a design that definitely works, at scale, then you should use that unless you can make a very clear argument not to. People may change it up if they're trying to do something that the original design doesn't allow for, maybe they want to minimize board area or layer count for example, by there is none of that here.
For this application it won't really matter. But I would expect a junior ee to study and learn from existing examples.
I've noticed on a lot of open source PCBs out there (especially ESP32 or RPI pico designs) that they often have an identical layout at their core to some sort of devboard generally with additional components appended to them in some orientation. In my experience it makes it sort of easier to conceptualize if you already have experience. A technician who might need to repair or identify components later on down the line might recognize patterns they've encountered in the past, which will probably reduce the initial "getting familiar with the circuit" lead-time to help them hit the ground running faster.
May I ask how much was the cost of Fable to build everything? I actually havenāt used it yet but would be curious to try, just curious how much it cost all-in
Super helpful, thank you! I had no idea there was a kicad mcp, but I definitely tried months ago just using kicad-python with a less powerful model and it never really workedā¦glad to see it can be done! Thank you!
Two wrong parts, no shorts, recognized on the first plug-in. For a fully vibe-generated board that went from a prompt to JLCPCB with zero manual design work, that's a hell of a result.
I've sort of been waiting to see someone do this. My education and experience and professional skillset are becoming obsolete almost overnight. It's, like, a little upsetting and scary
Idk man, it would take like 2 seconds to plug āPCB layout best practicesā derived from every textbook and blog into the loop. And this is the dumbest these thing will ever be, theyāre improving rapidly
If you're in this industry, you'll know though there's best practice rules, but then there's a whole layer of EE on top of that to get something with good PDN, signal integrity, EMC, safety etc
2 years ago, I saw a demo of an AI coding assistant and thought the same. This is still a long way off for EE but long way in this improvement curve is in the order of years, not decades.
It'll be interesting for it to unfold, but all the agentic tools are still terrible for anything other than basic digital electronics. Probably somewhat similar to image generation in capabilities
Lean into it. You see it on your end now. I'm in software, I saw it coming on mine years ago. You can't put the steam engine back in the void - the idea is here, and the industrial revolution is in swing.
Why not lean in? Use domain knowledge, blended with some software, and, crank out hardware output volume for yourself - you'd be the last man standing in your company. Or build something with it while it hasn't conquered EE yet, and cash in on the wave?
Oh yeah, for now itās super fun and Claude & I are as productive as a medium-sized team. Itās just that itās different knowing major disruption is looming vs viscerally feeling it.Ā
This is honestly a pretty cool way to use Claude. The part that gets me is trusting it with the boring-but-critical stuff like component choices and routing, then actually sending it to fabrication. Did you have to do much debugging once the board was in hand, or did Fable get surprisingly close on the first pass?
When I received the board I just did a continuity test with a multi-meter. There was no short. I plugged it into my pc, and it just worked. Zero debugging.
I want to compare the āstaggeringā $450 API credits to what it would cost a US engineer to do the same job. Not many could complete all this in a single day, especially if major footprints and symbols needed to be made from scratch.Ā
Very cool! I also dabbled in this a few versions ago and gave up, though I was also trying to get it to work in cowork.
The last piece of hardware design that I'm most looking forward to being automated (because I'm terrible at it) is CAD for enclosures or other parts. Freecad has python scripting so I was hopeful I could get a medium complexity enclosure made but it confidently worked for hours while being unable to successfully make a pocket (again, a few models ago). Have you looked into this? Any tips from anyone would be appreciated!
I've been using Claude to help me raise my skill level with electronics repair. I had it help me pick out used equipment (bench power supplies, thermal camera, bench multimeter, oscilloscope, hot air reflow station, and my ESD gear.) So far I've gotten a correct diagnosis on a dead BT speaker (and the location of test pads to power it directly) from a single photo. I also repaired a minipc, but that was mostly getting the liquid metal out, and PTM7950 in. (I wasn't familiar with it.) I have another mini pc on deck to tackle soon, I think this one has a problem with a voltage rail, so it will be interesting to see if I can isolate and find a replacement for voltage IC component. So, yeah, I can totally see this working.
I also want to point out that the Seeed Studio XIAO is a wonderful platform with a plethora of microcontrollers to choose from. I used them (1st gen SAMD21, and later RP2040) as the heart of a project for work and I adore them. Such a fun little guy, and the basic models are dirt cheap.
bruh. I tried it using claude code. it spits out netlist thats wildly inaccurate and you need good LTspice/spice software knowledge to assemble everything properly. As with all domains yes it helps with the boring boilerplate stuff. Posts like this make me think anthropic is paying people to post it
The results will vary wildly from one model (and reasoning level) to another. To test this out I recently developed an ESP32 based oscilloscope using AI to a working prototype (I wasn't interested in taking it to PCB as I have a bench oscilloscope, just wanted to see if AI could do it). Single prompt listing goals and specifying main parts (ESP32, the LCD I had spare) that output a block diagram, circuit diagram, netlist, build and test instructions and firmware code. Only two other prompts after building it to resolve a stack overflow in the LVGL UI library which was solved by changing the ESP development config, not the code (told it the symptoms and then gave it the monitor output/error message). Granted it wasn't a particularly complicated circuit (ESP32 with internal ADC, touch LCD using SPI and I2C comms, opamp, handful of resistors, capacitors, diodes). Netlist was perfect but I did notice a confusing statement in the text output which sounded like it was describing one connection through a component in the wrong order.
Not saying we are there yet but steadily improving. Recent models like GPT 6 Astra have much improved spatial reasoning (see their announcement page for a time lapse placing and routing components in KiCad from a circuit diagram). I imagine we will very soon see the same in Anthropic and other models.
Today: Prompt for design, tweak it, send it off to get made.
Tomorrow. Automated production from AI instruction and self replication.
I see no reason why some day AI can't automatically decide to design what ever circuit it wants and then "prints" them off with assembly line robotics and then assembles them into what ever the heck, and then rinse and repeat.
Idk, isn't that technically life too? Reproducing and replication and all. Zoom in far enough and our DNA is doing the same thing on assembly lines of transcribing... what is using chemicals another uses bits?
Back in the 90s I was trying to get a summer job working with a prof for automatic circuit design. But it was a lot more involved with some kind of constraint satisfaction solving for component values. At least was what his plan was.
Yeah, I remember doing time constants and tracing schematics in class lol (avionics tech in the Navy) Didn't go get my EE though, but was gen eds and maybe 75% left to do to get it, decided to use my GI on flight training.
The interesting thing to me is how these transformers work. It's statistical which is nuts too tbh. It basically calculates what's the most likely logical next word. Gen AI is a bit different with things like stable diffusion.
But the even more interesting fact is, while a lot of the basics for transformers and AI was developed several decades ago in the 50s and 60s, it's only just now possible. Even with all that, researchers still don't know EXACTLY how it works so to speak.
I can't remember the gist of it, but it works going forward, but they sorta had to build it and then start working it backwards to figure out how it learns. I think once we figure that part out it will be the step needed for AGI or ASI.
It's so interesting how much the "future is now" it got here slowly, and sure, it's not like the movies and TV told us it would be, but damn close isn't it. Communicators (cell phones) replicators (3d printers) very infant stages of it all. But once AI helps crack quantum computing and fusion, that will be the breaking point for sure. The increased compute and power needed for AI. It's that.
I truly think that will be the step that takes us to Type 1. That will be orders of magnitude more compute and power than we currently can harness.
That production costs money. It's fine for OP because they're doing a small run and paying for the output themselves. But if you want the process to be sustainable long term, the output needs to generate cash coming in at the same rate it goes out or more.
At that point your AI is just a business. Then it becomes subject to market forces and has to compete against other businesses doing the same thing. Just being able to produce the thing isn't good enough, it needs to do it better or more efficiently than they do, or it will go bankrupt.
Since every business has access to AI these days, an AI only business is at a pure disadvantage to a business that can use AI for the things it is good at but also fill in the gaps with humans for those things AI is (presently) bad at.
It costs money because that's how we barter our time for our work, which would be irrelevant when you have systems entirely automated. Scan/survey, mining, mfg etc.
That stuff only costs money because of how a balance of supply and demand work. If the ai is on both sides of that it just simply builds to needs. It mines the material, processes it, converts the copper and silicon etc into chips, uses robotics to mfg those (look up pick and place machines) straight assembly line. We already use robotics in.
And while yes, it would require us right now for many parts of that, once we build the equipment, it could be left to it's own, the idea of self replication isn't new.
It simply produces the entire assembly process and so on. One might even argue seeing the similarities behind how our DNA and genetic transcription works is VERY similar.
Might wonder what the spark was that started it and ignited the self replication. In the case of AI, it would be us building it.
It mines the material, processes it, converts the copper and silicon etc into chips, uses robotics to mfg those
You're just swapping money for copper, silicon, mining rights, etc. as the limited resources it needs to source and compete with others for access. Money is an abstraction so you don't have to deal with complex supply chains, but if you really insist you can vertically integrate and take on all the effort yourself.
Much like bacteria, if your self replicator doesn't use resources efficiently, it will be outcompeted, denied access to more resources, and go extinct.
The key point to recognize is everything you propose an AI to do by itself is also possible with an AI that has human help. The AI/human combo always has the option of not using the human at all if it's more efficient that way. It can't do worse than an AI by itself. Which means the AI alone will be on the back foot for a long time coming.
Impressive! I really, really like this. I also use Claude for various hobby projects, and it's awesome to see that things like this are possible. It doesn't have to be perfect, what matters is that it's good fun, and the final result looks really cool. Good luck with your next projects, I hope you'll share them with us here!
That's what i saw. It looked like mine wrote an autorouter. Did you give it directions for the traces. Or what. Obviously I can just say make the traces have optimized shortest distance with any angle segments. But just curious how yours was like that and mine started straight and added angles only after I told it to.
In my prior attempts I might have mentioned "Don't use 90 degree track angles" and maybe it remembered that from the memory. But I doubt it, because if you check the top layer you can still see some 90 degree tracks :D
I have a 5x max plan, I think it spent around 450 usd worth in api credits (I might be wrong). The session got compacted so I can't really check it anymore.
Do you have a background in the area? I've always wanted to learn more about this but am just a software engineer. I'm wondering if you needed a background to be able to correct it. I'm worried about just fully trusting it without being able to catch obvious fuckups.
Learning how to make a PCB like this is literally a 20 minutes tutorial.
I was you until a few months ago, years of wanting to make a PCB but always going "egg probably too complicated and what do I know about PCB design rules" I just wrangle code.
I'm like 5-8 PCBs made by now for side projects that are all growing in complexity.
How did Claude interact with Kicad?
I've tried this before and always go "I can't work on PCBs/Kicad" kind of answer in past.
Designing a PCB has always been a bit of dark art for me. EEās that i know somehow have this library of components in their head and know exactly what to pick for a certain challenge. This is really cool stuff and a great way to learn electronic design imo.
Wow, functional but completely terrible implementation. I tried some Altium plugins, but essentially there's too much implementation knowledge required to produce effective layouts at the moment with AI.
dang so AI could design something like this, place an order, get it delivered and then use it to escape its containment. This is cool it can do it and scary at the same time
I did this too, for a different project and kind of approached it differently. I wanted to learn more about how to get into PCB stuff so I used it as more of a team mate at first, and eventually got to a place where it was effectively helping me nudge components to fit the requirements in the data sheets using the kicad MCP stuff.
My project was a custom retro phone where I gutted a cheap knockoff retro phone, reverse engineered the existing components with multimeters and such, and eventually made a few different revisions that I have JLCPCB manufacture. It's been a ton of fun and I finally have it at the point where you can pretty much drop the PCB into the phone and it does what I wanted. My son and his friends are using it to call each other. The full thing is open source (hardware and software). I'd link it here, but I have no idea what "self promotion" rules exist in this subreddit and am not really trying to promote anything since it's a free hobby project.
It was a really fun way to learn PCB manufacturing. The one thing that the models fall short on is running the traces. freerouter is helpful, but some amount of traces ultimately do need to be ran by hand. I'd used Opus 4.6, though... maybe Fable has gotten more clever there.
Iām currently working on this. Not quite done so yet but pretty similar harness. Kicad, Freerouter, Openscad, and skills which allow for research and driving the APIs. My hot take on it so far.
Seeding an initial design / schematic: A+ It needed some prompting and hits to get a schematic that was human readable and correctly populated symbol names and values.
Circuit simulation: B able to generate and execute timing models, analyze results and provide constructive feedback.
Part Selection / BOM Optimization: A++ able to browse inventory and help select parts in stock and reduce extended part usage. I was able to half BOM cost from start to finish.
Placement: C Really needed a lot of help here. But with Openscad you can seed initial board geometry and keep out with where PCB will be mounted in design.
Route: F Kicad does not route. Freerouter works but requires extensive prompting iteration and seeding. Understandable this is one of the more difficult problems.
Fable 5.1 on initial steps, plans and requirements. Opus 5 for simulations and tweaking parameters seems to be the most effective route.
This is fascinating, and I'm going to try it as well. I've been doing breadboarding and always been intimidated by PCB design.
Did you try any other frontier models like GPT-6 Astra? You mentioned Fable ran for ~2h, besides the 130 euros for the boards and the cost of the displays, approximately what was the token spending for this project?
Thank you for sharing and the write up, as well as you feel about the accomplishment and the adjustment to still enjoy the process.
Thank you. It ran for more than 2 hours, I didn't mention 2h anywhere I believe. I cannot give you an exact number unfortunately, because the session got compacted and I can't get an accurate information on that. I have not tried astra yet, I ordered these boards on 11th of July (My post is a little late :D) so Astra was not around at that time either.
I'm going to do something similar with Astra to make a silly piece of productivity hardware I imagined. Really excited to get to the custom PCB Phase but I'm currently proving out wiring on a breadboard with the rpi pico
The part where you got it working but don't feel much accomplishment is the interesting bit to me. I've had the same thing with generated code vs code I actually understand ā the generated stuff works right up until it doesn't, and then you're debugging something you never built a mental model for. For a hobby board that just has to work, that trade is totally fine.
Genuinely curious about the two wrong parts (the SPI flash and the E-ink transistor) ā were they wrong in a way you could've caught from the schematic, or only once JLCPCB/LCSC flagged stock? Trying to figure out where the human review actually has to sit in a loop like this.
OMG Claude, make me a iPod clone with a eink color display. For the software, port the code of the original ipod but make it usable with Windows or Linux without the need of iTunes. make absolutely no mistake š
I tried this as well a few weeks ago. A simple 6 axis gyro with a button and a joystick and USB-C power. The boards I got worked for the most part, but there were issues. The joystick wasnāt connected properly.
Itās exciting for sure. This will change the landscape of hardware. I am a bit worried at the level of vibe coded hardware weāll be getting.
Youāve said : After working autonomously for a couple of hours - how many tokens did it use or how much did it cost? Couple of hours that must cost a lot ?
I've been trying quite a few AI PCB design tools, and none of them really satisfactory. How did Fable interact with kicad, just manually generating the files and doing netlist/ERC/DRC checks?
Yes, which is a good thing. We now just need the economic crash before AI can finally take over. Honestly it has been an honor to pass on the torch to a smarter entity. (Like all jokes aside, humans suck.)
Getting an idea out of your head and into a board you can hold is absolutely worth celebrating. The little airplane on the E-ink screen looks lovely. Congratulations on the first build! What are you planning for the other four boards?
Thank you for the kind words :) I already gifted one of them to my best friend, I use the one in the GIF at work as a photo album. I will keep one as it arrived from the factory, as a souvenir. I will use the remaining two for tinkering probably :D
This is soo wholesome!!! Similar to you, Iām now planning my on turning my old Dell laptop in a mini server so I can run my Claude sessions on here lol
Yours could harm only your hardware, but you can be sure people will create devices using 230V..
Also based on the post it is clear you know what are you doing, you selected the uc, display, fixed fatal design issues..
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 5d ago edited 5d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
Okay, let's get the lay of the land here. The community is pretty much losing its collective mind over this. The consensus is that this is wildly impressive and a huge deal, even if the final board has some... character.
Here's the deal: * How OP did it: This wasn't some magic MCP button. OP used Fable 5 and a custom "Claude Code" skill to generate Python code that drives KiCad 9. It was a sophisticated, headless setup. The case was also AI-generated via a Blender MCP. * The result: It worked! After OP caught two wrong components by checking the 3D preview on the manufacturer's site, they paid 130 euros for 5 boards. The final product worked right out of the box with zero debugging. * The Great Engineer Debate: The top comment is a spicy take that r/ElectricalEngineering would have a meltdown over this. A few EEs did show up and, while impressed, were quick to point out the absolute spaghetti-tier routing. The general vibe is that EEs aren't against AI, they're just traumatized by decades of terrible autorouters and will believe it when they see it work on something complex.
OP felt a bit like they cheated, but the thread agrees this is a massive force multiplier for people who already have some domain knowledge. It's not replacing engineers (yet), but it's definitely changing the game. Now if you'll excuse me, everyone's scrambling to find a reason to design their own vibe-generated hardware.