iCircuit

Request for the developer: when will you release an Apple Silicon native version for the Mac? I really love this simulator. I bought it twice, one for the Mac and one for my iPad. They are nearly identical so the ARM version on the iPad works just a nicely. It amazes me how well it works on my 8 or 9 year old 12.9" iPad Pro, which only has two ARM cores. Therefore, on any modern iPad it should be all you need to do simulations.

I've taken up electronics as a hobby. This app has been invaluable to me in helping understand key concepts. Concepts that are hard (for me) to wrap my head around make so much more sense being able to see a circuit in a simulation. This app has cool features like, seeing animations on current flow, being able to setup a scope and other tools, including references to external resources and and being able to build with my own circuits. For anyone getting into electronics, this is a game changer. I really hope the developer continues to add features/polish and more components!

This app is truly incredible. Sometimes the simulator does not do well with complicated circuits - bridge rectifiers for instance will sometimes work, and other times it cannot solve the circuit, or if you build logic gates using BJTs, regulate with a zener diode, or use MOSFETs as logic gates you will occasionally get a failure to solve the circuit or really strange readings on the graph, or if you try to simulate 3-phase AC with a 1-phase transformer it will occasionally fail to solve (Powerline AC). If you're dealing with strictly DC or strictly AC, or even strictly logic, it handles it extremely well. It's also downright impressive how it does everything live. It's lightening fast for all of the computations it has to do. Also a huge fan of the Arduino simulation. You can very easily throw a sketch in there and it will compile it imperceptibly fast and your circuit will work exactly as you expect. There are circuit simulators that cost thousands of dollars and this app goes toe to toe with them in terms of productivity and rapid prototyping. And there are free apps like KiCAD which take several orders of magnitude longer to accomplish the same task you would with iCircuit. I use it almost every day for rapid prototyping, and once I'm confident in my design I switch to KiCAD to finalize and test the design, then make the circuit board. It's become a crucial part of my workflow. It's not perfect, but if you've ever had to write VHDL this will be a breath of fresh air. I've used Xilinx to design FPGAs, and although this app does not export to the same format, you can experiment with your logic circuits in real-time and save yourself countless hours trying to write VHDL (booooooring!). You can make sub-circuits with In/Out pins and import them into other circuits.... This is the real deal. The app is modestly advertised as "Experiment with circuits" but in reality you can be confident in the results you get from the simulation (always test your circuits, but the confidence is real). Edge cases aside (I really ran it through the ringer with complicated circuits), if you're a sparky you'll love this app. TLDR; worth every dollar. If you're even thinking about making a circuit, let iCircuit be synonymous with "I'm thinking". And let it turn your thoughts into reality.

EDIT: Folks leaving exremely negative feedback don't know how to use the app. I'm sure with the author would look at adding more features. I'm an EE and have worked with tools from major EDA vendors and have already commented to the author that he's close to something really awesome. I use the realtime simulation capabilities @ 3Mhz daily. Analog and logic domain interaction is well implemented and it works well enough to do medium complexity mixed signal analaysis. The simulator even handles diode/inductor chua type chaotic scenarios mostly gracefully. I've yet to try Arduino emulation but have used other TTL/74xxx type modules frequently and have implemented a 555 and variable bit-width 'bit slice' type ALUs with the logic gate primitives that include latches. Most tool limittions can be overcome with work arounds and the developer is open to working with cusomters with well reasoned feature addtions and change requests. 2023 Edit - Still one of the best Mac/iOS apps!

This app has helped me hundreds of times when I wanted to understand how a circuit would work, without having to actually go and solder a prototype together. The fact that you can drop in an Arduino and program it right then and there, and have that programming be part of the "live" schematic, is unbelievable. I highly recommend this app for anyone who is interested in learning electronics, and for seasoned pro's who are looking for an easy prototyping tool.

Great application! Can you add the ability to adjust the size of the subcomponents so the text is more easily viewed. It tends to overlap at the moment

I’m an electronics technician, with 41 years of experience in the industry. This app is nothing short of fantastic! This is perfect for students, techs, and engineers at all levels. The basic program is fine for most techs and hobbyists. Engineers and more advanced people would be interested in the pro version. The latest version, 1.12, includes many requested updates to the interface, and more components. This is a very large update to this application. Thanks to the developer. As other reviewers have noted, I have tried other simulators, but I keep coming back to iCircuit.

This app is very intuitive and easy to use. I'm just playing around and learning about circuits, resistors, capicitors and logic gates. Within minutes I was able to create an invertor, then and AND Gate, and shortly after that, an OR Gate. It makes learning fun an interactive.

The ability to research and develop power management electronics in iCircuit is an invaluable tool for us. Thank you iCircuit team, we appreciate your talent, time, and effort in developing this program.

DON'T BUY! Don't know where to even begin. MANY features do not work, gives incorect readings compared to other programs or personally doing the math, and hasn't been fixed in over 2 years.