Mike Bushell's CRUMB Offers a Simulated 3D Breadboard Building Experience on Mobile, Desktop
Designed for education and hobbyists alike, CRUMB offers a 3D view of a SPICE-simulated breadboard circuit.
Vital Group's Mike Bushell has launched the desktop version of CRUMB, a three-dimensional circuit-building simulator targeting education and now available on Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Microsoft's Windows — with macOS and Linux ports to follow in the coming weeks.
"Our modern world is dominated by electronics. With a diverse range of careers in electronics available for young and adult minds alike, CRUMB offers an easy to use and interactive introduction to electronic circuitry," claims Bushell of his software. "Fully realized in 3D, you can construct prototype circuits as you would at the workbench without the risk of terminal component failure or the hassle of ordering individual components."
Bushell first launched CRUMB a year ago, initially targeting mobile devices. In the months since, its development has continued — initially by expanding the number of components available for simulation and, most recently, in bringing it to desktops and laptops with a Windows and pending macOS and Linux ports.
In its latest release, the software includes what Bushell calls a "great selection of starter components" including a simulated Arduino Nano and the parts needed to "study the workings of transistors and audio filtering all the way to programming an EEPROM [Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory] to run a basic program." The software also features debugging tools including an analysis view and an oscilloscope, Bushell notes.
"The core simulation is SPICE based, as is everything really these days," Bushell says of the software's technology stack. "Unity is used for the 3D display. The UI is built as a .NET app with Unity embedded as a window. The Arduino side uses a virtual machine and the the C language code editor is AvalonEdit embedded."
Links to all the versions of CRUMB are available on the official website; buyers of the desktop release on Steam, which is currently only for the Windows operating system, will receive the macOS and Linux ports as soon as they're available.