The layout is simple and fast to develop,.The app's style is consistent with the Android UI/UX,.There are numerous advantages to this choice: Look and feelĭesign-wise, I followed Google's Material design guidelines. Unsupported package types such as BGA show their pinout in a table. The most extreme example is the QFN/QFP package, that is made of 11 different tiles.Ī 20 pin QFP package automatically generated picture (ATtiny406-M microcontroller) For instance, DIP packages are made out of 3 different pictures: top, mid and bottom part. To show them in my app, they are dynamically built with a set of 'tiles'. However, there are other packages that have a variable shape and number of pins. For this package, we simply need to write the pins description on the package picture, based on the information from the database.Ī TO-92 component automatically generated picture (LM35 temperature sensor) Some packages are straightforward: TO-92, for instance, always has 3 pins.

The pinout pictures are drawn on a canvas with bitmaps and text. However, due to the number of supported components, the pictures cannot all be stored in the app: they have to be generated at run-time. Some pictures are manually saved (mostly for popular board, such as the Arduino Uno). Generating pinout picturesĪfter the database, the most important aspect of the app is showing a picture of the pinout of every chip. The Android appĮlectroDB was the first Android app I published on the Google Play Store. This format is then very efficient to parse at run-time with Android's library org.json. This quite dense script parses all the files and outputs a single, structured JSON file with all the required information included.

To use these resources, I extracted all the information that they contained and assembled it into a universal and easy to read format: JSON.

There are third party libraries that I could support at a later date.

Being open-source, there are very few restrictions to the usage of these files (CC-BY-NA license).

Thanks to the large developer community, it is often updated which means that the database should be fairly complete and error-free.

To fetch data from the biggest number of components I could possibly support, I chose to scrap the KiCad library files because:

The first issue I tackled was the generation of the database. Worflow of the app: a JSON database is constructed from KiCad's lib and dcm files, read at run-time to show the pinouts The database scrapper This diagram represents the general workflow of the app: In this section, I will be doing a technical overview of the implementation of ElectroDB: how it works, what I used, etc. Its source-code is on GitHub (see below). Spend less time browsing and more time doing actual electronics!ĮlectroDB is available on the Google Play store, for free, with no ads.

Fritzing android