ElectricVLab Reviews

Thank-you for building such an amazing program. When I launched this program for the first time, I was a little confused with the controls. I think there could be better controls and explanation on how to use the program properly, but once you build a couple of things by looking breifly through the manual, it becomes a little more clear. My only big problem with this program is that it doesn't make it easy to diagnose a problem with a pre-existing circuit. It would just spit out errors like "critical error in circuit" most of the time which isn't too helpful considering that it does not go into further details as to why a circuit failed. Overall, however, there is such a wide variety of tools and components to use and combine that it makes the experience really fun even though the learning curve is a bit much for a complete beginner such as myself. Again, if error logs could be more descriptive of what problem I'm having with a given circuit, it would be much more helpful and user friendly.

Overall, great for simulating circuit designs or learning the basics of circuit analysis. What would be nice - being able to have an Arduino IDE actually within the program to run arduino code and simulate arduino designs (without having to fire up the Arduino IDE externally). Also more arduino board variants would be superb (such as MEGA 2560, which is the one that I use)

A nice tool more than a game. Very useful to teach electronics and electrical concepts to kids and students. The 3d components give the feel of working in a lab and that gives the students a sense of reality.

This is GREAT!!!!!! I became interested in electronics at an early age (about 14 y.o.) . Started building homemade robots at 18 . Learned and purchased parts at Radio Shack. Started building TTL logic circuits so I have been there. This is why I like this so much. I intend to share this learning tool with others. This is not a game even though it is fun. Maybe I shouldn't say this.......... but I think you could raise the price a a bit .....sounds weird , but I think it's worth every cent. (might want to add a few more components like optical encoders ,solenoids,etc.)............thanks...........Tony

I love this simulator, it's something I've been looking for, for a couple of months now. My only desire for change, is that it begins to include more components, especially in the Arduino or Pi form. I found a single Arduino component, but I would really love to get much further into developing with both boards, using this program's layout and graphics. I love it! Please add more components! I'll pay for the expansions as DLC if necessary!

I really like this game, the concept is great. As a programmer who's beginning to learn more about hardware, it's a nice learning tool and COULD potentially, be great. However, at the moment, it lacks depth. You can build circuits, and yes, things will go badly if you wire them incorrectly. LEDs will explode, resistors will fry, all that good stuff. You can interface with an arduino board which is _incredible_ if I'm being honest, but - and here's where my primary issues with this learning tool lie - there is no mechanism by which to import custom logic boards, or custom components (modded in, custom made, or otherwise) You might think "oh hey, but you can hook up an arduino and have it talk to pins on the board, surely that will let you play with complex real-life sensors and things of that nature" and sure, I could do that - but the cool part about this tool is you should be able to create working circuits that will work in real life without actually having to hook everything up, buy all the tools, so on. For example, let's say I want to wire up a breakout board sensor to my arduino eventually, in this game there's no mechanism to introduce my own components that would simulate it's inputs and outputs. It needs to take note from garry's mod's wiremod and introduce: 1. Custom mod-in components. Particularly, sensors, with a scripting/programming interface. 2. "LCD" screens which allow us to input values and render meaningful information, even if this doesn't directly reflect how it would work in reality (I wouldn't expect to be able to hook a sensor right up to an LED and display meaningful information in real life, in most cases) it's an incredibly fun tool. 3. Possibly even a very simple programmable chip This would mean circuits you build could interact with web components, physical hardware components, or other programs on your computer over ports, for example - you could build interesting things that actually _do_ something. Imagine writing a "GPU temp sensor" component in which you write functions to grab your GPU temp on your physical machine, and it reports that information to the circuit through pins. Then you can use an faux-LCD display to render it! THAT would be amazing. It would also make the steam workshop infinitely more useful! Right now, the only avenue for that is arduino and a lot of hackery, but these features would take this product to the next level and I could recommend it to anyone.

I was hoping this was going to give me some kind of instructional knowledge and LAB like experiments but you need a level of knowledge to even understand what the components are let alone how they interact and function. This is for someone with understanding or a qualification... if you know nothing like me then this is useless... very disappointing and unimaginative as far as education goes. Did I say this was as disappointing as F'? 2/10

A quite interesting program. On screenshots, it looks kinda beta, but in reality, it's a finished product in which developers put some sincere effort. A lot of examples (with text annotations), and even more if you go to their website and download additional circuits created according to the electronics courses in some particular universities. It's simple in terms of functions and components. Sure, there are more serious programs for developing circuits or learning this, but these programs, first of all, much more expensive, and let's face it: you'll never "have time" to learn to use them outside of university class or if it's your job. ElectricVLab, on the other hand, is exactly enough to help you get familiar with basic circuit building. Something many of us tech people always wanted to do, but never had time, because of more complicated and practical stuff like maybe software engineering. Just launch and do it, without investing too much energy. And don't be disappointed hearing the word "basic". It's actually the most fun part of it. Because more advanced components are actually even simpler in many cases because they already have integrated circuits that do most of the stuff and you just have to tell it what to do. I'm in software engineering for more than 20 years but always wondered how exactly all this diode and transistor magic work when visiting the electronic component store or handling some old server hardware. I had this course in my university too, but you know how it is most of the time: you just make stuff as fast as you can and forget because there's just a lot of other stuff. So thx for this one, with it I don't need to learn yet-another 'MatLab' just to have a little bit of tech fun. Works on Linux through Steam Play.

It is particularly useful when studying electronics because its possible to build, test and monitor a circuit. I found it very user friendly and I became familiar with how to build, delete and change the parameters of my circuit very quickly.

It crashes sometimes (so save your work). The graphics are the ugliest I have seen (could 2D graphics be nicer? could increasing to full screan actually change resolution of the window? Can we have AA?). It probably does not work with hi res monitors at all (though I did not try). The tools are limited. The scope can have just one trace (cannot have different synch signal, cannot have two traces synchronized by a signal, cannot have X/Y). Interface is inconvenient (why can't I vary variable resistance directly by mouse?) I cannot reliably tell whether LED is on or not (visually it is difficult to see). There are tons of small bad GUI items. And I did not tried yet integrated analog and digital stuff, I am sure there tons of problems there too. But do I recommend it? Hell yes. For about $10 you get something that otherwise I do not know how to get (legally anyway) - circuit simulator. So, if you have any idea that you want to test quickly - it works. So, suffer through it.