How do I describe or draw my circuit in such a way that everybody understands what I am building? On EE.SE there is this circuit editor available to quickly draw a circuit, I'd propose to have that here too.
There are not many questions on the Arduino stack yet, but I invite everybody to add example questions that would benefit from a circuit editor in the answers below.
We really do need Circuit-Lab on here. This is enabled on EE.SE. So as to your feature-request, could the team pretty please consider enabling Circuit-Lab on here? I would personally use this on wiring questions, or anything that needs an electrical schematic. The Stack Exchange team looks for questions/posts that would benefit by having Circut-Lab, so let's make a list of such posts/questions.
Some questions that could use this:
This is community wiki, so if you see something that would be good for this list, add it!
YES!
We really do need Circuit-Lab on here. The Arduino is more than just code. It is hardware, software, IDE and core libraries. This SE needs efficient/effective methods to communicate all of these functions of the Arduino eco's or framework.
Note SO's arduino tab has many questions with long winded descriptions of circuits, that work in conjunction with code. Where it would be best described with a schematic from Circuit-Lab. A picture is really worth a thousand words.
Often with these cases. The comments explode and drag out with simple questions about what was omitted in the written description. Causing the question to be answered in the comments and not with a clear answer, if at all. In these cases a schematic would provide better questions and result in better answers.
As the answers should also allow Circuit-Lab too.
Another question that benefits from a decent circuit editor: How to switch an external circuit with Arduino?
This is typically what happens when none is available. Now I have to grab pen and paper and follow the description word for word while drawing what I think the author meant. Someone else may draw another circuit. And the people who answer, need to make descriptive text too so the OP can grab a piece of paper in turn to try understand what the answerer tried to capture in words.
Fritzing appears to be the official standard for Arduino circuits. (Site currently mostly down at the moment.)
Another typical example of where circuit diagrams are required. Project Showcase '14
Every answer with that should probably ultimately contain a circuit diagram.
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
While I generally agree with Pops, I looked at some of the other sites with this setting enabled:
It seems to me that the list fits into what you might call hobbyist electronics/embedded systems sites. So I'm a little more convinced the feature will be used for good and not ill.
Adding my vote for a schematic editor. The best way I have at the moment (even though I have Fritzing) is a pen, paper, and camera, as in this answer.
Try to use schem-it for online or you could try using an offline circuit simulator just like multisim and circuit wizard.@
Shown below is a simple schematic created with CircuitLab, which is a drawing and simulation package referred to in a number of answers above. It appears that CircuitLab recently (October 2016) became available in arduino.stackexchange.
To use it, click on the circuit icon next to the image icon in the editing tools bar (at top of edit box).
When you edit a question or answer containing a CircuitLab schematic, the schematic can be edited also. The editor's components list contains numerous passive components, some generic transistors and op amps, and a few ICs (eg NE555). Apparently, to draw an Arduino is a fairly lengthy process starting with a Custom box (from the Annotation section). However, if one does get drawn and saved, it can be reused. From the FAQ: “How can I save my custom part settings for re-use on another schematic? ... you can copy and paste an item from one browser window to another and ... all of its parameters will be copied and pasted...”
CircuitLab documentation is available at circuitlab.com. Note, the CircuitLab editor and simulator does not work in all browsers; see CircuitLab Documentation: System Requirements for more information. Briefly: “CircuitLab officially supports Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox”. While Apple Safari and Opera are not officially supported, users report success.
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
Note, answers to “Embedding a schematic editor” on electronics.stackexchange meta include comments similar to above; replies from CircuitLab developers; and a couple of alternatives that now are moot. Several non-embedded schematics programs are listed in “Suggestions for a program for drawing simple schematics”.
This is a somewhat difficult spot. For a site like Mathematics SE, it's a no-brainer that MathJax support should be enabled, because nearly all posts use and benefit from it. Similarly, we'd never consider adding a chess game replayer to Ask Ubuntu; it just doesn't make sense.
Here, the distinction isn't so clear. It's obvious how circuit diagrams are related to the topic of Arduino, but the list of posts that could benefit is pretty short as-is. And adding a package, even one that we already use on another site, isn't free; for example, see Nick Craver's (somewhat technical) explanation of testing MathJax on Stack Overflow. Granted, those are different dependencies on a different site, but the principle is the same.
The point of all this is, I haven't seen enough of a need for this tool demonstrated to justify enabling it. I realize the list is a bit old, and was probably forgotten about for a while, so I'm not formally declining the request just yet. If you're still interested in having a circuit diagrammer on Arduino, show me that it will benefit more than just a handful of posts!
I believe if we have a way to embed live circuits than we might have a better tool to explain things... It's not just a matter od schematics, but showing people the current flow usually maked their life a lot easier.
My votes goes to http://www.falstad.com/circuit, but I would love to see embeddable links
