During a session, PCB Tracer reads and writes over a dozen different file types — including images, schematics, datasheets, netlists, and revision history. It also has an AutoSave feature to prevent losing your work. Every file is saved to your project directory during a session. Doing all of this without constant requests for use permission requires the File System Access API, which is not yet available in all browsers. The Firefox developers has explicitly stated that this API will not be supported.
I wonder (outside HN) what percentage of people who need to reverse engineer a PCB are also people who insist on Firefox. Probably smaller than the percentage of those people who want to save results to their local filesystem.
> Browser Not Supported
>
> PCB Tracer requires a browser that supports access to a local directory.
> This is needed to save and load your PCB Tracer project files.
>
> Please use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge for the best experience.
On Firefox, after bypassing the ominous warnings, when I tried to create a new project and choose a directory to save the project files, I get
> Directory picker is not supported in this browser. Please use a modern browser like Chrome or Edge.
While I appreciate the early warning, so that the user doesn't spend too much effort only to later realize that they can't save their files to disk, I don't appreciate the implicit labeling of Firefox as not being a "modern" browser.
If you're developing a web app with APIs only available in certain browsers, just say/admit so.
This document gives an overview of the many features of PCB Tracer. It is much more than a drawing program and is very data-rich. The software creates, reads and writes a number of different files. These include netlists, schematics, pdf datasheets, project files, project history, BOM, and PCB photos. https://pcbtracer.com/PCB_Tracer.html
The overt hostility in this thread really bums me out!
I came to say that this looks amazing and came at the most absurdly perfect time, because I was literally habitually skimming HN before settling in to manually reverse engineer a PCB.
I hope this works well, because it's an extraordinarily useful tool if so.
PCB Tracer has a growing set of happy users. I think you will discover why, once you give it a try. The software has hundreds of convenient features and its active development continues. I've been building PCB Tracer mainly for fun and learning. It's certainly been a fun project! Hope you give it a try soon, find it useful and enjoy using it. -Phil
I don't regret getting downvoted to talk about how excited I am for PCB Tracer one bit. It's awesome - I've spent the past day pretty much doing nothing but tracing a fairly complex (for me) board.
I do have some feedback, and I've found some bugs. I gave up on your photo manipulation tools and just did manual keystone perspective tweaks in my photo editor. I would happily use your app to do it if it worked, but the keystone thing was super broken for me; the sanest way to make this work would be to have the user drop 4 points on each side and just do it; all of the fussy nudge/scale stuff is really just a half step towards point-based keystones.
Early on I had some pretty serious bugs that emerged when I was jumping between magnification levels. At one point all of my objects were unceremoniously moved off where I'd placed them to whitespace outside of the photo. That sucked. Now I save frequently and only change magnification when I'm in select mode.
I also find that the "fit canvas to window area" is a bit broken when moving between full and partial sized browser windows in Brave on Windows.
However, the biggest bug or behaviour I can't quite figure out is that when I switch to the back view it doesn't seem to reverse the position of the dots and objects placed. I am probably doing it wrong, but still: my strongest feedback currently is that switching sides is awkward at best and slightly broken at worst.
All of that said... I love it! I am thrilled with it. You've made something totally amazing in a short time.
I needed exactly this sort of tool for a reverse-engineering project! I was so invested I returned here to write this comment... then spotted the other comments about "no Firefox support". Indeed, visually broken "Browser Not Supported" popup appears.
Darn. Disappointing. Guess I will have to keep looking.
Also... it doesn't look open-source and the comments about file access are valid. The functionality listed is completely possible as a browser-based local app with no server functionality.
Other webapps (https://falstad.com/circuit/) seem to be able to open a file picker in Firefox just fine. Saving is just via downloading to the Downloads folder, but the functionality is not impossible.
If all the app need is to upload a photo of PCB, <input type="file"> is more than sufficient. It's been baseline years ago.
For download, it can download from a blob URI. This is not an uncommon practice.
If (not verified since I'm using Firefox) it claims that "Gerber files are composed of many individual files so that those two don't suffice" and the app does involve Gerber processing, it could have been solved by introducing a zip library.
I just said it a couple days ago that soon AI will generate pcb and schematics, definitely we are heading that way. In fact, even beyond that, I think it will be as follows: you prompt AI “design a DC-DC voltage step down buck converter circuit” and the AI will download EE skill, design the schematic, test it in MCP connected to circuit simulator, then build the pcb for you, you download the files and send it to the factory.
EEs better start looking at burger king jobs tbh. Funny how AI is notorious at attacking STEM jobs but I see lawyers and doctors are still a protected class due to lobbying and making laws that prevent AI to be used in these fields.
PCB Tracer relies heavily on the File System Access API for reading and writing project files, images, netlists, schematics, datasheets, and more — including an AutoSave feature. Unfortunately, Firefox hasn't implemented this API. I hear you, and I'm exploring a desktop version that would remove the browser dependency entirely. — Phil Giacalone
22 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 52.6 ms ] threadWhy do you need file access to sell me?
Closed immediately.
btw. I am your target market.
Would be really neat if it could trace automagically too, possibly with sanded PCBs?
If you're developing a web app with APIs only available in certain browsers, just say/admit so.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
I came to say that this looks amazing and came at the most absurdly perfect time, because I was literally habitually skimming HN before settling in to manually reverse engineer a PCB.
I hope this works well, because it's an extraordinarily useful tool if so.
I do have some feedback, and I've found some bugs. I gave up on your photo manipulation tools and just did manual keystone perspective tweaks in my photo editor. I would happily use your app to do it if it worked, but the keystone thing was super broken for me; the sanest way to make this work would be to have the user drop 4 points on each side and just do it; all of the fussy nudge/scale stuff is really just a half step towards point-based keystones.
Early on I had some pretty serious bugs that emerged when I was jumping between magnification levels. At one point all of my objects were unceremoniously moved off where I'd placed them to whitespace outside of the photo. That sucked. Now I save frequently and only change magnification when I'm in select mode.
I also find that the "fit canvas to window area" is a bit broken when moving between full and partial sized browser windows in Brave on Windows.
However, the biggest bug or behaviour I can't quite figure out is that when I switch to the back view it doesn't seem to reverse the position of the dots and objects placed. I am probably doing it wrong, but still: my strongest feedback currently is that switching sides is awkward at best and slightly broken at worst.
All of that said... I love it! I am thrilled with it. You've made something totally amazing in a short time.
Darn. Disappointing. Guess I will have to keep looking.
Also... it doesn't look open-source and the comments about file access are valid. The functionality listed is completely possible as a browser-based local app with no server functionality.
Other webapps (https://falstad.com/circuit/) seem to be able to open a file picker in Firefox just fine. Saving is just via downloading to the Downloads folder, but the functionality is not impossible.
For download, it can download from a blob URI. This is not an uncommon practice.
If (not verified since I'm using Firefox) it claims that "Gerber files are composed of many individual files so that those two don't suffice" and the app does involve Gerber processing, it could have been solved by introducing a zip library.
EEs better start looking at burger king jobs tbh. Funny how AI is notorious at attacking STEM jobs but I see lawyers and doctors are still a protected class due to lobbying and making laws that prevent AI to be used in these fields.