We are happy to present our new Fritzing release 0.7.5. It has a bunch of new features including the ability to have multiple PCBs in one sketch, using a brand new Arduino-Mega shield layout, new generic double row pin headers and much more.
Thanks to Alexander for translating Fritzing into Greek and to Josef for the Czech translation update.
If you don‘t know Fritzing by now:
With the Fritzing environment you can learn about and work with interactive electronics. We provide tutorials and our Fritzing software to support you and your project. Using the Fritzing software you can create PCB layouts as easily as drawing a line.
This year, we were invited again by our dear friend Martin Hieronymus to teach the basics of Arduino and Physical Computing at the Nordakademie in Elmshorn near Hamburg.
The weekend workshop as usual started with the basics: Digital Out and In, Analog Out and In and serial communication. In the afternoon, we showed them how to make PCBs with Fritzing. On the second day, the students got together in teams and had to work on a set of topics: music, environment, home, alarm clocks, toys, social network or car. At the end of the day, each group had a fully working prototype ready to present.
One group for example invented a game in which players have to jump to a randomly selected place to hit a button - or have to be the second to do so. Another group came up with a beer mat, which monitors not only if the beer gets empty, but also if it becomes to warm.
It was interesting to see how different groups handle tasks in different ways. Find the pictures in our Flickr-Pool.
Since March, we have been giving Arduino Beginner Workshops here at the
Fritzing HQ in Berlin Mitte. In two weeks, we will have the first
“Arduino etc. Advanced Workshop”. We are very excited and happy to have
the opportunity to go a step further.
The topic this time will be »Making a PCB«. So if you have a project
and you want to learn how to make a PCB out of it and what else you
have to know – sign up!
Today, Mario Böhmer visited us and gave us a copy of his new book »Beginning Android ADK with Arduino« – it was impressive to see the possibilities with this dynamic duo.
The book gives an overview about the existing hardware development boards, explaining the software environments and guides you from outputs, inputs, sounds, light and temperature sensing to touch and motion.
The powerful combination of mobile devices and Arduino is very exciting and we are looking forward to new ideas, approaches, and outcomes.
With the release of 0.7 we are dropping the Alpha in favor of a new, shiny Beta. Why do we think the new version deserves this? Because we finally cleaned up two longstanding architectural flaws. While you won’t notice any difference when you launch the new version, these changes will make your work with Fritzing clearer, cleaner, and easier, not to mention whiter, brighter, and more sparkly.
fzz is the new fz
First, we are deprecating the old .fz file format in favor of the .fzz file format (formerly known as the “shareable” format). You can still load your old .fz files, but Fritzing will only save out .fzz files. The .fzz format is just a zip file that contains a sketch file plus any custom parts used in that sketch. Essentially the new “Save” is the old “Save as Shareable”. This change eliminates a number of prompts when you open and save files, and makes sure that custom parts always travel with the sketch they belong to–which used to cause a lot of trouble.
When a sketch containing custom parts is loaded, the parts are placed into a temporary parts bin, which is only available while the sketch is open. You can move parts out of that bin (for example, into the My Parts bin) if you want to use the custom parts in other sketches.
all views are now created equal
Second, all three views now behave in the same way. There is no longer an implied workflow that suggests starting with the breadboard view and then moving on to schematics or PCB. In other words, the breadboard view is no longer the master–you can start working in any view and clean up the breadboard view later. In the old days this was very difficult because the breadboard view would get messy when you made changes in the other views.
This equality is achieved by making the breadboard view use ratsnest lines just like the other views. If you see a ratsnest line in a given view, it represents a connection you have made between parts in another view. If you always work in the same view, you will never see a ratsnest line. If you work across multiple views and see a ratnest line in a particular view, you can decide whether to lay out the connection in that view.
An important implication is that if you connect two parts by mistake–say by drawing a wire between them–and then delete the wire, the connection will be gone. But if those parts had also been connected in another view, when you delete the wire, the ratsnest line will be restored.
By contrast, deleting a ratsnest line means deleting the connection in all three views. Much of the time, this means that you will be deleting a wire between those parts. But it may mean a part gets disconnected from the breadboard in Breadboard view. Or it may mean that a wire between different parts get deleted, because the connection represented by the ratsnest line is not direct–for example, if the ratsnest line is between A and B, but the actual wires are drawn from A to C to B. So be a little careful when you delete ratsnest lines–it may be safer to switch to one of the other views and do the deletion there.
smoother
Everyone around Fritzing HQ is saying how much smoother and more predictable it is to work with Fritzing 0.7.0 compared to earlier versions. We hope you will feel the same way. Watch out for one of Stefan’s Killer Tip videos to show off some of the 0.7.0 improvements.
