Hi Ubuntu-person,

We have been building our linux binary releases on Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS.  Is it time for us to move to 10.04 LTS instead?  Please let us know–particularly if you still prefer 8.04.4–by adding a comment to this post.

Cheers.

• j

Comments from the old Blog:

1. isnoop #1. Juni 2011, 04:22I'm all in favor for 10.04 and any other LTS as soon as the community accepts it.
2. bweber #2. Juni 2011, 03:48So far I'm running fine in 11.04. Thank you for all the work on this software!
3. jestin #10. Juni 2011, 20:21Most Ubuntu users who bother do design their own circuits are likely to be running the latest, or the second latest release (I'm still on 10.10). And by release, I mean regular releases, not necessarily the LTS release. I would recommend building on the latest, regardless of whether it's LTS or not. Thanks for the great software.
4. tmberthold #11. Juni 2011, 23:05because it is free, there is no motivation NOT to upgrade Ubuntu when a new version comes out. In fact, every new Ubuntu version seems to use less RAM and disk space, plus has newer versions of software. So I think many people will use the latest versions of Ubuntu, and I vote for moving to version 10.04. Thank you for your great software!
5. cqexbesd #13. Juni 2011, 10:10A common practice (in my limited experience), when it comes to internal support for Ubuntu in large organisations, is they support the last LTS and on a best effort basis, the most recent release, LTS or otherwise. You may have no wish to support 2 releases in which case I'd say go for the most recent LTS only. It will be easier for users on a newer release to run something build for the previous LTS than if things were reversed.
6. inizul #17. Juni 2011, 23:56I vote for moving to version 10.04 Thank you for this great software!
7. Angus Pearson #23. Juni 2011, 00:17If you must use 10.04, but 10.10 is great, although at the moment Unity and 11.04 haven't got my respect (Especially as it didn't work with my desktop cube!!!). But thanks for the great work, and go for the 10.04 LTS.
8. Entropicus #23. Juni 2011, 22:01When you install software for circuit design, most likely your interest is more in applications than in the operating system itself. As long as your applications run nicely, you wish stability in the background OS. For this kind of person, Long Term System version is best. However, I have seen more software development oriented people like the ultimate version, a never ending story about making programs to fit the new one. I balance between renew and stability, is the latest LTS. Honestly, I expected you already had a Fritzing version for 10.04, because an Ubuntu user rarely had any reason for not upgrade a LTS version (it took five years its development).
9. Chris Bristol #19. Juli 2011, 01:48I agree with the majority that an LTS version is best. I've been using 11.04LTS without any problems so would vote for that.
10. LightScape66 #20. Juli 2011, 12:14@Angus: 11.04 will also use Gnome if you configure it. I don't like Unity, too! Unity may be okay for beginners, but experienced users and those, who will use a lots of applications may prefer Gnome 2.x.
11. Jonathan Cohen #22. Juli 2011, 18:00Hi, As you probably know, the binary release for Fritzing 0.6 was built using 10.04.2 LTS. Cheers, - j

And received a box full of lovely electronic goodies instead?

One of our customers sent us this great photo of his Fritzing Starter Kit unboxing experience – we can only imagine his surprised face. :D

Seems like Deutsche Post got something mixed up here. If we had only put a Lilypad into the kit, the little girl who is now the proud owner of a Fritzing Kit would not be quite as sad…

Comments from the old Blog:

aotto2011 # 6. Juni 2011, 11:22

Thanks for the awsome and easy solution to this strange problem.

At last, a new release of Fritzing.  Sorry it’s been such a long time since the last one–partly this is because there is no full time Fritzing staff (we all have to work for a living), and partly because I had the mistaken notion that I knew a fast way to implement an autorouter.  But let’s go straight to the before-and-after:

The spiders-on-drugs image on the left is from Fritzing 0.4.3; the image on the right is from Fritzing 0.5.0, and they are each the result of autorouting the barebones arduino example.  The one on the left took 30 seconds on a 2.80 GHz dual-core laptop, the one on the right took 3  seconds (yes, on the same machine). This video might make the difference clearer:

Why should I care?

If you are still gamely reading at this point, and don’t know what an autorouter is, I commend your courage, and will now attempt a definition.  Once you’ve placed your parts and wired them up in breadboard view or schematic view, and you’re ready to make a pcb, you’re faced with a new task.  This task is to draw out or route the electrical circuit–the connections between parts–in copper on your pcb.  The orange-colored lines in the above images represent copper routes (also known as traces) on a pcb (green), where the white shapes represent the outlines of parts. Routing can be done by hand, but it can be tedious and tricky (though some people find it enjoyable, like doing a puzzle).  An autorouter is a piece of software than can do the routing task for you, and some routers are very sophisticated–able to handle millions of connections.  Fritzing’s new router is not the brightest star in the galaxy, but as you can see from the two images, the new router is not so dim a bulb as the old one.

Some background

Here are the details on the new router:

• It's a "manhattan" router--all new traces will be drawn at 90 degree angles.  If you draw your own non-manhattan traces, the router will respect them, but you will probably make the routing job more difficult.
• It only takes a finite (and usually short) time for the router to determine whether it can trace a path between two points (no more waiting for endless futile line-probes).
• DRC (overlap checking) comes for free, giving clear feedback about what's overlapping, so the old crazy DRC code has been replaced.
• There is a rudimentary rip-up-and-reroute feature, meaning that if the router can't successfully route the whole board, it will automatically try routing again with a different ordering of connector pairs.  This is usually quite speedy, and you can limit the number of retries: the router will keep the best result.
• As before, when drawing a trace fails, the router will attempt to place a jumper.  The new router's jumper placement code is much improved over the 0.4.3 code.
• The router does not guarantee a shortest path when routing between two points.

The new router–like the rest of Fritzing–is a work in progress. You will probably have to do some tidying up after it runs.  However, it’s already such an improvement over the previous that we decided not to wait any longer to release it. Here’s what’s still on the to-do list:

• Placing vias in double-sided routing.
• More intelligent rip-up-and-reroute strategy.
• More intelligent overall routing strategy.
• It misses some routes that it should find.
• Some traces violate DRC.
• Running the same autoroute twice in a row won't necessarily give the same result.

Despite the to-do list, we think you’ll be pleased.

Cheers,

• j

PS.  For those of you interested in the technical details, the new router uses a “tiled” data-structure.  The technique was invented by John Ousterhout, and in fact Fritzing uses a modified version of the basic corner-stitching code from Ousterhout’s Magic VLSI Layout Tool. I’ve also incorporated ideas for improvements from a paper describing the Contour router and from another paper describing an ECO router.

In general, tile-routers are more complex than maze-routers, but I felt that a tile-based approach was suited to Fritzing because we don’t enforce a grid.  It was also much easier to get my head around tiles than steiner-tree approaches (see a random sample of the latter).  In theory, tile-based routers scale up better than maze routers because the number of tiles doesn’t expand so quickly as the working area increases (on the other hand, maze routers do guarantee a shortest path between connections).  You also get some freebies with tile routers: the DRC and jumper and via placement are all variations on the same underlying code.

Four new books are making intensive use of circuit layouts created with Fritzing:

“Arduino: Praxiseinstieg”, by Thomas Brühlmann (mltp, German)

“Beginning Arduino”, by Michael McRoberts (Apress)

“Building Wireless Sensor Networks”, by Rob Faludi (O’Reilly)

“Praxisbuch Arduino”, by Ulli Sommer (Franzis, German)

They are using breadboard diagrams, schematics, and part graphics to illustrate examples and guide the learner throughout the book. Some even offer the related Fritzing .fz files for download from their website.

We’re very proud to see Fritzing becoming a de-facto standard for documentation and teaching!

P.S.: Unfortunately, not all of them are making fair use–one forgot to reference Fritzing. This is required by our CreativeCommons license, and we think that’s the least a publisher can do when building on our work!

Comments from the old Blog:

1. Thomas O'Brien # 30. Jan. 2011, 17:15 I have the "Wireless Sensor Networks" book, and have started reading it. I like the writing and explanatory style. It seems that just about everything is there to help me get going with a wireless network application. Now if Fritzing Fab would just get started...
2. BobAnderson # 3. Feb. 2011, 05:25 I am sorry that some publishers have not referenced Fritzing --- most unfair, if not illegal. On the other hand, I found out about Fritzing from a reference (a live link actually) in the arduino.cc site. My plan is to use Fritzing for a while and if I find it as useful as I expect I will, I shall express my appreciation with a financial donation.

Fritzing has always been at home in many worlds. It’s a tool that is equally used by designers and artists who are looking for a simple way to bring their concepts to life, as well as by DIYers and makers of all kinds who love to play with electronics.

Two recent publications exemplify this diversity: The exclusive British design-trends magazine “Viewpoint” (issue 27) writes about Fritzing as an example of the implications that DIY has for business, and the French hobbyist magazine “Eletronique Pratique” (issue 356) has an 8-page feature introducing Fritzing in-depth.

Thanks to Kai Wiechmann for photographing us for Viewpoint and thanks to Yves Mergy for the French tutorial.