Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to take the step from physical prototyping to actual product. We are creating this software in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, developing a tool that allows users to document their Arduino and other electronic-based prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and to create a pcb layout for manufacturing./quote]
A lot of people probably know about this, but it would be great if this software got bigger and better, so much potential
Yeah, it does seem to be under appreciated. Although, many have began to use it to diagram breadboard setups in the playground/examples pages.
and for classroom usage as well...
I believe there's a new release of fritzing coming soon. maybe we can take that as an event to generate some interest in places like this forum, make magazine, hack-a-day etc.
I personally have used it to document a couple of projects. The software is conceptually amazing but I haven't quite done anything useful with it. For one thing I find the parts choice and representation make it hard to make a tidy breadboard or schematic.(look at the breadboard power supply below). I'm hoping the new release will help and that we'll get more examples I can learn from.
I tried it on Windows XP. When I move the mouse up to the part window to see what parts are available, I get the blue screen of death.
Makes slow going designing circuits...
I tried it on Windows XP. When I move the mouse up to the part window to see what parts are available, I get the blue screen of death.
Makes slow going designing circuits...
yes, that would slow you down all right!
I guess it's more likely a java issue or windows rather than fritzing itself but...
I'm running fritzing on vista but my XP box was whining at me today to upgrade java, maybe that's worth a check.
I have the check-for-java-updates option turned on. I got an update notice last week, which I installed. I don't think that's it, but I haven't tried too hard to determine what the problem is. The blue screen showed two different faulting functions.
Too bad, too, because it looks like a neat idea.
Hi guys,
thanks for trying out Fritzing! While it might not be ready for prime time just yet, it should already be helpful with many things, and also it should be running pretty stable. We just did a big workshop over the weekend in Sweden, with people happily producing PCBs at the end.
@PaulS: The blue screen you're getting is scary..! Haven't seen this on any machine yet. It can't be related to Java, since Fritzing is no longer based on Java, but Qt/C++. Can you maybe try the newest release and give us some more details about this problem?
@bill2009: It looks like you came from a stripboard design. We don't explicitly support this yet, but rather assume a breadboard as a starting point. Do you maybe have some insights how your approach could be better supported?
And thanks for the initiative to do some evangelism for us!! A tool like this will only be really useful if many people adopt it and share their designs in a common format.
Best,
andré>
from the Fritzing team
Rats. Installed the new version. Started fritzing.exe. Moved the mouse over the components window. No blue screen. Selected a component. Blue screen. Something about a corrupt driver. No clue which driver.
Just loaded on my Windows XP pro SP3 and it seems to work fine, no Blue Sceen of Death when moving parts to the breadboard.
Lefty
Hi PaulS,
do you maybe have similar problems with other software? Other tools based on Qt would be Google Earth, or VLC media player.
Unfortunately it seems like this problem is specific to your system setup.. If you can read any of the error messages, we might be able to investigate it further, though.
Thanks,
André
We use Qt at work. Other Qt applications work fine.
My son installed it last night on his Mac. Worked great. I'm now really disappointed that I can't use it.
Unfortunately, it takes a long time to boot this computer, so I'm not fond of blue screening it over and over just to try to trouble shoot it. I'm supposed to get a new computer next year. When that happens, I'll install Fritzing first, then see what other application causes the blue screen, if it happens on the new computer.
PaulS, try updating the video driver on your system. I've been having troubles with that on my home computer lately and fritzing was one of the casualties I got from it (when I told it to generate a PC board). After updating my video driver, everything has been stable so far, including fritzing.
I tried it out for a while and I really liked fritzing. It has a great interface for education purposes especially. It was a little cumbersome for me, but I'm used to Eagle and I think fritzing will improve automatically as people develop more parts for it and expand the library. The breadboard approach is spot on! That really makes it easier to digest for newbies especially.
Nice work!