I design a lot of hardware projects and kept running into the same problems:

– digging through long datasheets to find constraints – checking whether parts were risky or going out of stock – looking for reference designs that already solved similar problems – catching obvious power or schematic issues too late

So I started building small internal tools to help with this, and eventually turned them into a web tool.

Right now it can:

• review schematics and PCB exports for common issues • summarize datasheets and highlight important constraints • suggest alternative parts that are in stock • estimate power usage and help build a power tree • find relevant reference designs

It’s still early and definitely imperfect, but it’s already sped up my own workflow quite a bit.

I’m curious what parts of hardware design people here find most repetitive or annoying. What tools do you wish existed?

https://hardware.dog