Built an AI-based schematic review tool

[erhash-rh]

Hi all, I'm glad to find this community of people interested in using LLMs to design and analyse circuits.

I’ve been working on a side project called galvano.ai - an AI-based schematic review tool, which I hope can be useful for anyone designing circuit boards and wanna have another pair of eyes over the schematic before they build it. Would love to get your feedback on it and the approach taken.

The idea is simple: you upload your schematic/netlist, galvano then fetches relevant datasheets (or you can upload your own) and then you can:

• do datasheet-aware automatic schematic review, node-by-node.
• or simply chat with your circuit to troubleshoot or get design advice.

The automatic review checks for common mistakes (missing pull-ups, wrong pin connections, risky power setups, and a slew of other possible issues), then gives back a “risk score” per node with explanations, advice for improvement and always references the datasheets.

Here are some examples:

• ESP32 based temp sensor: initial bad design -> improved version
• 555 LED flasher: initial bad design -> improved version

Currently the service works well with KiCad schematics, single sheet for now. If you design in another EDA, galvano also accepts netlists in SPICE format, if you can export them in that way.

Disclaimer

• It cannot review PCB layouts, yet, but the review does provide layout recommendations if specified in the datasheets.
• It cannot fetch component alternatives. It will in the future.
• This service is by no means perfect.

During development of this tool for schematic review, it became very apparent that datasheet understanding is critical. If the LLM doesn't extract the relevant information for analysing a node or subcircuit, or doesn't parse some tables correctly, the analysis would be wrong. For example, some failure modes involved parsing tables containing multiple component MPNs.
I've ended up using a separate service for datasheet PDF parsing combined with the latest GTP5, the service now works well for the limited no of circuits with limited to moderate complexity I've tested.
During development I've considered using Skidl however in the end I've decided to write a different method of parsing circuitry info to LLMs. I needed to incorporate dynamic datasheet info extraction per component, and make it general.

When uploading a netlist in SPICE format, and not a kicad_sch schematic, there is no component placement information there, so I wrote a schematic placer to generate some crude schematics, which I consider open-sourcing. I'd love to further talk about this since Skidl has the same functionality.

[devbisme]

I've ended up using a separate service for datasheet PDF parsing

What service is that?

When uploading a netlist in SPICE format, and not a kicad_sch schematic, there is no component placement information there, so I wrote a schematic placer

Is there a reason a schematic with symbol placements is needed? Isn't all the connectivity and part information stored in the netlist file?

[erhash-rh]

The PDF parsing service is from Mistral.

With regards to schematic placement, indeed the analysis works without it. The netlist-to-schematic output is purely for visualisation purposes.

[devbisme]

If you're in need of example KiCad projects to test Galvano, I have a page that lists over 40,000 KiCad-related projects hosted on Github. Not all of them are circuit designs, but a lot of them are.

[erhash-rh]

Thank you very much. This is a great resource!