Say you’re building a gadget. You’ll probably need several widgets, gizmos and electronic thingymabobs. CircuitHub is now here to help. The startup launched today and is attempting to be the world’s first free online, collaborative parts library. Best of all, it works seamlessly with popular design programs.
This tool is aimed squarely at makers. By offering a comprehensive and detailed parts library, CircuitHub hopes to be the main resource for finding electronic components. But CircuitHub will only be successful if it can build this massive database. The entire system is open for group collaboration. Spend a few minutes and add some parts to the database.
Using Dropbox for cloud storage, CircuitHub integrates nicely with Altium, Eagle, OrCAD and Allegro. Use CircuitHub’s library with your design software. That’s the genius here. CircuitHub isn’t attempting to disrupt a maker’s workflow; the startup is trying to improve it.
By sourcing the right part from the start, makers will experience less hassle when approaching manufacturing.
“Kickstarter is the largest crowd-funding site where anyone can help fund ideas proposed by anyone else” explained Andrew Seddon, CircuitHub’s co-founder, in a released statement. “The single biggest project and the highest funded category are both dominated by electronics. Yet 84 percent of the top physical product-based projects were severely delayed primarily due to problems with interfacing design data into and through factories. This problem is exactly what the CircuitHub library is designed to address.”
CircuitHub is backed by Y Combinator with investments from Google Ventures and notable angel investors including Paul Buchheit (the inventor of Gmail), Matt Cutts (creator of Google SafeSearch), Alexis Ohanian (cofounder of Reddit), Harj Taggar (cofounder Auctomatic), and Garry Tan (cofounder of Posterous), among others.