Hi HN,
I kept wiring Ben Eater's 8-bit computer wrong, so I built a realistic virtual breadboard editor.
Some of the nice features are side-by-side diff, scope, schematics auto-sync, auto-router (BBRouter stands for breadboard router), and my favorites: upload from the real Arduino IDE and connect to your AI with MCP, let Claude & co build it or help you troubleshoot.
The link is the SAP-1 running. You can orbit it, probe a hole with the scope, slow the clock down, play with the virtual displays for debugging, then you can actually build it following the step-by-step instructions.
A side-goal is to create a community, there are quite a lot of simulators out there but mostly offline / too abstract to realistically use it for a real build. I also never found one that had a decent UI/UX and worked well on mobile or with a trackpad.
Happy to answer anything, and tell me what breaks.
p.s. Maker plan is $7/month; code HACKERNEWS makes the first month free and then $5/month for as long as you keep it.
This looks amazing. Congratulations on the launch.
I was hoping to find Ben's Digital breadboard clock [1] in there, I'm currently building it!
How can I hide or move the ram program window? It's blocking the breadboard.
Congrats on the launch. Have fond memories of early 2k where everything starting with bb was amazing