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Circuit Sim with SPICE @ 2015 SuperConference

Learn circuit simulation with LTspice or NGSpice. Enter a schematic, simulate, view the results, and make simulation models.

tom-andersonTom Anderson
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This is from the Hackaday Superconference 2015. I gave a short introduction to simulation in time and frequency. Starting with a simple filter example, I showed simulation in LTspice, NGSpice, and KiCad. Between these tools, you can simulate on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

The videos that were part of the talk are now on youtube. They are linked in the project details.

Here are the videos that were part of the talk:

To download LTspice, visit http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/#LTspice

To download NGSpice, use the Ubuntu Software Center and search for NGSpice.

Either one of these programs is sufficient for the class. I use LTspice on Ubuntu 14.04 and I use LTspice on Windows 7 and 8, and Mac OS X.

To make good documentation for a simulation, it helps to have a schematic. While pencil and paper is good, it is even better to use a computer. LTspice includes schematic entry. For NGSpice, KiCad can be used. The class will cover the KiCad integration with NGSpice.

I am making Videos! Much of the course content will also be available as a series of fast-paced five minute videos. The resolution is 720P, and I think the sound came out well.

To get all the videos to fit into five minute chunks, I had to edit aggressively. I'll have to get the audience to tell me if the videos go too fast. I took out all the um's and ah's and also removed my colorful side remarks. I hope that what is left is suitable for downloading directly into your brain, with no wasted space!

My goal for the class is to have about half lecture/brain-dump and about half questions and answers. I hope that everyone gets Spice working and is able to simulate circuits by the end of the two hours.

The circuits at the beginning of the tutorial are a simple RC filter. This is just to get going and demonstrate how to operate on the different platforms. Next up are some Spice model tricks that you probably haven't seen before.

  • Behind the scenes of the videos

    Tom Anderson • 11/11/2015 at 07:07 • 0 comments

    To prepare for my talk I made videos about my presentation.

    For the videos, I used a Heil PR40 microphone with a Zoom H4 as the preamp. I recorded the screen and audio with iShowU and edited in iMovie. I used two VMWare virtual machines, once for Windows 8 and another for Ubuntu 14.04. One benefit of the VM's is that they resize to fit nicely in a screen capture area.

    I was surprised that iMovie works well these days. I have Final Cut but the relative simplicity of this editing task made me shy away from the complexity of the Final Cut production flow. The only thing I couldn't figure out was how to have two inset pictures at the same time. I did without - this would be complicated in Final Cut, also, and would require using Motion. The rendering times from iMovie were fine. Even at high quality, the rendering time for five minutes of video is only about a minute. The file sizes are about 12MB per minute of video.

    You will get to see the mess in the background of my office in the intro. For these 8 second introductions I used a fancy light with a diffuser, and I adjusted the color balance so that I wouldn't look like a blue ghost.

View project log

  • 1
    Step 1

    To download LTspice, visit http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/#LTspice

    To download NGSpice, use the Ubuntu Software Center and search for NGSpice.

    Either one of these programs is sufficient for the class. I use LTspice on Ubuntu 14.04 and I use LTspice on Windows 7 and 8, and Mac OS X.

    To make good documentation for a simulation, it helps to have a schematic. While pencil and paper is good, it is even better to use a computer. LTspice includes schematic entry. For NGSpice, KiCad can be used. The class will cover the KiCad integration with NGSpice.

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Kenneth Trussell wrote 11/18/2015 at 03:59 • point

Tom, I really enjoyed the session. I was not originally signed up and didn't figure there was room but about 30 minutes into your session, I checked and was able to sit in. I am looking forward to watching the videos to start from the beginning. (I was the guy who had Dr. Leach as a prof at Georgia Tech, btw.) Thanks again!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Tom Anderson wrote 11/12/2015 at 17:24 • point

I refactored my videos into stand-alone segments all less than five minutes. This was a big change and required me to edit them down, and make them more modular. I also recorded an eight second introduction to each one, and I named them and wrote a description. To make the text easier to read, I put the important text highlights into lower thirds or as magnified insets. Each segment took one to three hours to produce, and there are ten so far.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Paul Stoffregen wrote 11/11/2015 at 18:22 • point

Congrats on the videos.  I'm really curious to see them.

Alysia and I made video for the audio workshop, and it turned out to be a huge undertaking.  I just spent about 15 hours editing it over the last couple days!  The total length turned out to be just under 49 minutes.

In FCPX, you can get the picture-on-picture effect by placing the other video above the main one in the timeline, then (with the overlay video selected and the play point somewhere on that video) in the preview window use the Crop - Trim to cut away all the parts where you want the main video to show up.

  Are you sure? yes | no

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