atopile

Happy New Year! Yesterday we published our last pod of the year with Narayan and Ioannis of atopile, who are bringing software development practices to electronics design and verification. We dig into why their real competitors are legacy tools like Altium—not other startups—and where "vibe-tronics" (LLM-assisted electronics design) is headed in 2026. Check out the episode here: https://tradeoffs.fm/10

BMS design is surprisingly simple — it just isn’t well documented. My colleague Nicholas Krstevski just published a deep dive on using ADI’s ADBMS6830 to architect a modern BMS. What I like about this piece is that it cuts through the hand-wavy diagrams and gets into the details you actually need. Check it out! https://lnkd.in/gsN_UDuX

I used to think design-for-test was a “production problem.” In prototypes, you’re just rushing to get it working—right? Then I realized something: With the right tools, adding test hooks in early prototypes takes… basically no extra time. Case in point: My latest board has headers that plug directly into my Saleae. No flying jumper wires. No fiddling with clips. Just click → capture data. How? I’m using atopile to design my boards, and it makes adding “luxury” debug features almost effortless. I one click installed the saleae package, selected the connector configuration I wanted and tagged the signals I wanted to measure. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gwd7c6CN Now I can debug faster, measure more, and honestly—my desk looks way cleaner. Big thanks to Saleae, Inc. for making the dream analyzer for this kind of setup.

We tried GPT5 this week for hardware design. Claude Code still wins for us. Why? Claude consistently calls our tool, atopile, and follows the workflow to validate and reuse instead of greenfielding new solutions that are broken. GPT5 via cursor-cli often tries to freehand the job instead of using the tool. Impressive model, but tool use matters more than raw output when you’re generating real hardware. Both are moving fast and we’ll keep testing. If GPT5 learns the flow, we’ll be the first to say it. If you want to see why tool use matters for hardware, try the atopile VS Code extension and design your next PCB with code. What are you seeing in your stack?

Using a programming language just because you're comfortable with it is like using a hammer on a screw. Sure, it might get the job done, but it’s going to be slower, messier, and probably strip the thread. Programming languages are tools. And like all tools, the right one makes the job easier, cleaner, and more fun. The good news? LLMs make it easier than ever to pick up and use the right tool for the job, even if it’s new to you. We’re building atopile because electronics design deserves a purpose-built language. Something better than twisting a screwdriver with pliers. Curious what you’re hammering on today.

What we learned after talking to over 200 people in two days at this year's OpenSauce: 1. Many engineers deeply want to use code for electronics design 2. Open-source continues to inspire incredible passion. 3. The best pitch isn't words, it's showing real products built with your tool. 4. Traditional EDA tools still intimidate a lot of talented people 5. Reusable, parametric designs are consistently highlighted as one of https://atopile.io most powerful features. Huge thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth! Did we miss anything? Let us know what you value most in electronics design tools.