This libray is at a very early stage of development. There are probably lots of bugs, and only Device:R, Device:C, Device:L and Spice-enabled components have been tested so far.
test-ngspice.py shows how to run a simulation using Ngspice from the command line.
For a more advanced example on how to use this library, see the output from this Jupyter Notebook. Just about anything in the notebook can also be run directly from Python and produce output in an interactive matplotlib window instead.
If you want to out the notebook yourself, follow the install instructions below and then start the Jupyter notebook with:
jupyter notebook
If this doesn't work, try teling Jupyter not to start a browser and then open the link that is printed in your preferred browser:
jupyter notebook --no-browser
I've been using the following libraries to run this:
- KiCad Version 5.0.0-rc2 nightly build as of 16 aug 2018
- Python 3.5 or Python 3.6 with pip
- Matplotlib 1.5.1 or 2.1.1
- Ngspice 26-1 or 27-1
- Jupyter Notebook =1.0.0
All this is running on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or 18.04 LTS.
I don't see any reasons why this shouldn't work on other Linux distributions or even on Windows, but I haven't tried it myself.
There is also some support for the Xyce and LTspice engines.
I downloaded and installed the Xyce binaries for Ubuntu 16.04 (they won't work on Ubuntu 18.04) from here:
Note that the butterworth schematic will not work with Xyce as is. For some reason the LMV981 OP-amp model causes a "timestamp too small" error when trying to simulate the circuit. Switching to a different OP-amp model such as the LMH6624 does work though.
LTspiceXVII was installed using Wine on Ubuntu 16.04.
Follow the instructions here on how to install the nightly build of KiCad on Ubuntu:
Python, matplotlib and Ngspice, pip are the versionsions that come with Ubunutu and can be installed with:
apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-matplotlib ngspice
Jupyter notebook was installed using pip with:
python3 -m pip install jupyter
Unless otherwise specified all files are licensed under the following terms:
Copyright (C) 2018 Christer Weinigel <[email protected]>
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the [GNU
Lesser General Public License](LICENSE.txt) for more details.
In plain english: If you use these libraries in your application, you do not have to publish the source to your application. But if you make modifications to the spice or kicard libraries themselves you have give publish those changes.
You can use the source code in the Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb) and test applications (test-.py) any way you like. They are meant to be used as examples and can be treated as public domain. If your jurisdiction will not recognise public domain, you can choose to treat these files as licensed under the terms of the MIT License:
Copyright (c) 2018 Christer Weinigel
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The file spice/patch.py was originally written by the user techtonik on github and is available here:
https://github.com/techtonik/python-patch
This file is licensed under the following terms:
MIT License
-----------
Copyright (c) 2008-2016 anatoly techtonik
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The file has since been modified slightly by Christer Weinigel to allow for in patching of files in memory.
The vendor spice models found in models_source are copyrighted by the respective vendors. More information on licensing can be found in each file.
As far as I know I am following all the license requirements for distributing these files. If I have inadvertly failed to do so and you want me to remove a file, please send me a mail at [email protected] and I will do so promptly.