RE: [NEW] Help us understand how you're using AI

shabaz — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 22:19:11 GMT

Hi,

I suspect you'll get a lot of quick feedback if people can just respond here too.

I often ask AI for component advice, just in case I'm missing some obvious part, e.g. some IC that I might not be aware of.

For example, I needed a microcontroller, I asked it, it suggested one (NXP part) that I indeed had never heard of, and after a short review, I went with it.

Some of the recent microcontrollers are extremely AI-friendly, in that there's lots of command-line tooling and scripts and examples and SDKs on GitHub, which means that AI can perhaps more easily do some of the work, instead of having me manually go through the graphical user interface, even if I use the GUI later.

Also, I try (semi-success so far, but it is working to an extent) to see what second-source parts are out there, or alternatives, from physical dimensions - i.e. I might mention some component dimensions (such as inductor sizes or connector dimensions, switches, relays etc) to see what else might fit and work, because component costs can be wildly different, or a range might be supported (i.e. I don't mind which part precisely, for instance, a SPST switch may be needed, but maybe better to have a footprint for SPDT). There's industry-specific popular dimensions for particular components, but I may not have heard of them, so again the AI helps to a degree here.