MCU (MICRO CONTROLER UNIT) +Sensors+Actuators+Batteries
gEDA - Freeware, full
GPL'd suite of Electronic Design Automation tools. These tools are used for
electrical circuit design, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, and
production. Currently, the gEDA project offers a mature suite of free software
applications for electronics design, including schematic capture, attribute
management, bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into over 20 netlist
formats, analog and digital simulation, and printed circuit board (PCB) layout.
Eagle CAD - Freeware for
non-profit uses, the most popular PCB editing software although definitely has
a sharp learning curve.
Eagle3D - Freeware, an extension to Eagle CAD to view your
circuits in 3D.
KiCAD
- Freeware, for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed
circuit board artwork. Has 3D circuit viewing capabilities.
Altium - Used to be called
Protel.
Easy-PC - It has a built in Spice
simulator, too.
PADS - PCB
design software.
NI Ultiboard -
National Instruments PCB design software.
PCB
Trace Width Calculator - Freeware Javascript useful to determine if your
circuit traces are thick enough to not fry.
Proteus - PCB design
and simulation software, can also simulation MCU's.
OrCad - PCB design and it's simulation software, PSPICE.
Falstad - Freeware
Java applet circuit simulator (no software to install).
VMLAB - Freeware
tool for AVR develoment. VMlab can be integrated with WinAVR, also it supports
digital and analog simulation and debugging. Really, it is the
"lightweight Proteus".
NI Multisim - National
Instruments electronics simulation software.
TI SPICE - Freeware Texas Instruments SPICE-based analog circuit
simulation.
TINA - TI's electronics
simulation software, with MCU capabilities.
Qucs - Freeware, an
integrated circuit simulator which means you are able to setup a circuit with a
graphical user interface (GUI) and simulate the large-signal, small-signal and
noise behaviour of the circuit. After that simulation has finished you can view
the simulation results on a presentation page or window.
AUV Workbench
- Freeware, simulation software designed for expensive AUV platforms, but easy
to use with nice graphics. Developed by NPS
Center for AUV Research, Naval Postgraduate School.
Player Stage -
Freeware, robot simulation software, but not user friendly.
Microsoft
Robotics Studio Visual Simulation Environment - Less than user friendly
robot simulation software bought from AEGIS.
PHUN - 2D Physics Sandbox
- Freeware, a 2D physics simulator that is *very* simple to learn and can even
simulate water.
3D Graphic
Robot Simulation - Graphic java-based 3D robot arm simulator
DMOZ Open Directory list - list of robot simulators
Sinbad - Java 3d
robot simulator for scientific and educationnal purposes. It is mainly
dedicated to researchers/programmers who want a simple basis for studying
Situated Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and more generally AI
algorithms, in the context of Autonomous Robotics and Autonomous Agents.
Webots - very expensive
professional robot simulation software
RoboRealm - Its simple
GUI interface allows you to do histograms, edge detection, filtering, blob
detection, matching, feature tracking, thresholding, transforms and morphs,
coloring, and a few others.
OpenCV
- a popular open source collection of computer vision algorithms. An
intro
to OpenCV is also available.
Computer
Vision Source Code - a collection of computer vision software links
MatLab - has tons of
packages for anything from simulation to computer vision.
SciLab - open source
alternative to MatLab.
Electronics
Assistant - basic resistor and frequency calculator
MSC Adams - dynamics
simulation
Microsoft
Movie Maker - free and already installed with every copy of Windows, this
software is great for making videos of your robots. I used this to produce all
my robot videos prior to 2009.
Sony
Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack - This is what I used to produce all my
robot videos starting 2009. WMM above had a lot of limitations with sound and
special effects.
other
movie making software - a review of the top movie making software. Make
sure it allows at least three audio streams (movie audio, added music, voice
over, etc.).
ViewMaster - Gerber viewing and
editing software. Look in the free downloads section for ViewMate, a freeware
gerber viewer. Requires registration.
Microsoft
Visual Studio - free edition, includes Visual Basic
AVRStudio - the official IDE for programming AVR's
WinAVR
- tons of open source AVR software all in one install package
Procyon AVRlib
- open source software for AVRs
PonyProg - freeware
serial programmer software for AVRs
ImageCraft ICC - AVR C
compiler
vAVRdisasm - freeware
AVR Disassembler
WebbotLib - the
easiest and best documented open source library for AVR devices (recommended)
a really large list of more C for AVR links
Procyon ARMlib - open source C library for ARM processors
WinARM - collection of ARM based software
PICC
CCSC
MPLAB
IDE
Google
Sketchup - Freeware (with limitations) CAD software. For more info, see
Google
Sketchup Info. Also check out
Airman00's robot CAD parts collection.
Autodesk Inventor - popular 3D CAD software, this is what I use
to design my robots.
Solid Edge - 3D CAD
software.
Solidworks - A popular 3D
CAD software.
Rhino 3D - 3D CAD software.
Alibre Design Xpress - has limited freeware version.
Blender - Blender is the
free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating
systems under the GNU General Public License.
BobCAD-CAM - Both 3D CAD and
CAM software.
To learn more about FEA and CFD, please read
my FEA and CFD tutorial.
ANSYS -
All ANSYS FEA products.
Solidworks Simulation Professional - Both thermal and stress
analsys tools.
COMSOL -
Multiphysics software, with neat
capabilities.
Open
Source FEA Software List - a bunch of free FEA software, but with little to
no documentation.
FreeFem++ - Freeware FEM
software.
FEMAP - Industry software with thermal and flow solvers.
Fluent - Flow solver now
owned by ANSYS.
ANSYS CFX -
The ANSYS flow solver.
Solidworks Flow - Solidworks fluids solver.
OpenCFD - Freeware fluids
solver.
CFdesign
- Thermal fluids solver for use with AutoDesk.
There are a few CFD software suggestions on the forum:
188
and
2284.
EdgeCAM
Mastercam
Mach3 and LazyCam
Dolphin CAD/CAM
FlashCut CNC
Vectric
LinuxCNC
JalaCNC
- Freeware, plots CNC g-code in 2D.
KCam4 - limited
shareware, plots g-code in 3D.
BobCAD-CAM - Both 3D CAD and
CAM software.
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