Electronics Software for Education Use

[dezza]

Hi Everyone,

I'm an IT Manager at a school in South Australia (not an electronics engineer sorry, however have been watching the EEVblog for years).

We currently teach Electronics at our school, and are using the following two programs on our school-owned devices:
-Circuit Wizard 2 (for on screen schematic circuit drawing and simulation – generally we can save files as PDFs or print screen images to capture evidence)
-RealPCB (for PCB design, exporting files as PCB negatives etc)

Due to financial reasons a lot of schools in our state are now moving towards a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario. This poses issues with licensing of software that isn't free to use.

With BYOD devices it is easiest to manage if we can either use online software or free software.

Our electronics teacher has been researching alternatives to the current software we use, however hasn't had much luck. Then I thought of the EEVblog forum and that there would be a wealth of knowledge on here that we can hopefully get some suggestions from!

Can anyone suggest some alternative software that we could use with students? I imagine the simpler to use the better.

Any help you can give us will be much appreciated!

[Halcyon]

Welcome Dezza. Have a look at what the various Universities are using. For example, University of NSW have free or discounted software available for students through the following pages:

https://www.it.unsw.edu.au/students/software/
https://unsw.onthehub.com

Perhaps try approaching some of those software vendors yourself for educational pricing. You could also have a look at OnTheHub directly and see what they offer.

Not sure if this is beyond the scope of your students but they might offer cut-down versions for high-school level studies?

[rstofer]

KiCad seems pretty popular for schematic entry and PCB layout.

http://kicad-pcb.org/

LTspice is terrific for simulation.

http://www.analog.com/en/design-center/design-tools-and-calculators/ltspice-simulator.html

Maxima (and the GUI version - wxMaxima) is a great math program.  It is used at CERN and I believe they are driving the development

https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxmaxima/

And, for a small student fee, Matlab for math and simulation of just about everything!

https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab.html

[james_s]

One of my favorite quick simulators is this http://www.falstad.com/circuit/  There's an offline standalone version too, also free. It's the simplest to use simulator I've ever encountered and while it could be considered a toy, it's actually reasonably useful.

[Mr. Scram]

Wow, moving to BYOD for financial reasons sounds like a terrible idea.  I understand it's not a matter of choice, but that must be a pain.

[PChi]

I second the recommendation of LT Spice and KiCAD. I can't see any point in paying for the 'professional' offerings  because they don't seem to be much better for most normal applications in my limited experience.

[ez24]

 

[rstofer]

The stuff I listed above will probably work on Windows and Linux but I wouldn't expect any of it to work on iOS or Android.  BYOD, to me, means the school doesn't provide computers.  Fair enough!  But the students probably need to think outside the cell phone.

Can you imagine doing a PCB layout on a 7" tablet?  I can't even imagine doing it on my 13" Surface Book.

How about those virtual keyboards for typing up a few thousand lines of VHDL?  Spelling counts!

A 17" laptop with some I7 processor would be about the minimum I would want to use in a portable configuration.

[owiecc]

LTSpice and KiCAD are the best option IMO. Horrible when it comes to UI but very capable (and free).

[PChi]

Another advantage of LT Spice, apart from the price, is the availability of help on the internet.

[ez24]

Maybe you can find something from this list:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/other-blog-specific/a/msg1341170/#msg1341170

[dezza]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, much appreciated! I have passed them on!

[Bicurico]

For education, take a look at what Autodesk has to offer:

- Eagle -  https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/free-download
- Circuits - https://circuits.io/ --> this is a great piece of software, works inside browser and allows to simulate electronic circuits, which you build on virtual breadboards. Supports Arduino with online compiler!

Regards,
Vitor