If a single prompt could replace a board with a working one, what would you most want it to make? @Blonskr

The three devices were a home voice assistant, a USB conference microphone, and a handheld electronic pet. It wrote the specifications itself, selected components from in-stock items at U.S. distributors, and designed the four-layer board layout, 3D-printed enclosure, and software in the devices. The original launch post read:

"Each board was ready for manufacturing in under a day, with minimal human input."

"All three devices worked without needing any electrical modifications."

Each board can be sent to production in less than a day, and all three devices worked without any electrical modifications.

The boards were made by the partner, Diode. According to Anthropic’s research paper, most of the instructions Diode gave it were short phrases like “tidy up the schematic” and “continue.” They only asked it one question during the whole process: “Can it work without a battery?” It wrote its own routing tool to handle the routing, which took about half an hour; after that, each long trace took about a second to route.

I think the most interesting part is what happened with the earlier generations. Diode had used older models to make many boards before. They were about 95% complete, but unusable. A circuit board that’s 5% off is a scrap board. On the official PCB Gym layout-and-routing benchmark, Fable 5 scored 25%, and 5.2 scored 69%.

The crypto world isn’t short on open-source hardware. Bitaxe is a publicly designed board with a commercially available mining chip soldered onto it, and many people use one to solo mine Bitcoin at home. There are also open-source hardware wallets. In the past, making a modified version required someone who knew how to design circuit boards. Based on this demo, in the future, you may be able to get a design ready for prototyping just by clearly stating your requirements. I’d guess open-source hardware communities like these will be among the first to use it.

The company itself also spelled out the limitations: these three are prototypes that haven’t undergone electrical validation, antenna tuning, thermal testing, or certification, and they weren’t designed for mass production. The models weren’t connected to test equipment or production lines; Diode’s engineers handled the board manufacturing and testing themselves. They used only off-the-shelf chips, so designing chips and tape-out are still a long way off.

Claude Fable 5.2 designs a working voice-assistant hub https://youtu.be/vdYynH177h0?si=c6A7NWRxzjNvut6R via @YouTube

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This article was first published on X by @musinoot