Sort of OT: library of electronic circuits?

[elbekko]

As I've posted elsewhere, I'm starting to dabble a bit in electronics with an ESP32 (and it'll be Land Rover related at some point as well, hence only sort of OT).

My main frustration at the moment is that it appears you need to roll everything yourself from basic components. As a software developer, mainly working with .NET, I'm used to the concept of NuGet packages where a lot has already been figured out for me, and where the solution is maintained by some open-source people.

Simple example, I was trying to look up a straightforward way to sense a 230V AC signal. An hour of trawling the interwebs, having to skip past all the "ermahgerd mains voltage" tripe, and I'm barely any closer to a properly robust solution. And most of it is outdated, referencing components that are NLA.

So I'm wondering, is there really nothing similar like NuGet/NPM/PyPI/... for electronics? Just a "230V AC to GPIO" package, or a "regulated 3.3V from 8-20V" package, or a "drive a stepper motor" package, that you just drag into your circuit design and done with it, you know it's been validated.

Oh, and sidenote, I absolutely loathe the filter function on sites like RS. What good is being able to define an input voltage range when every component lists it in their own, unsearchable way? I'm starting to remember why I stuck to the software side

[FridgeFreezer]

These days for hobby stuff there's a TON of ready-made modules on eBay and the like, although with anything critical I'd de-rate all the claims by about 50% in terms of current / safe voltage / etc. especially where mains voltage meets Chinese manufacturing and/or lithium batteries.

A lot of the rest of it is taking example circuits from datasheets or appnotes for particular devices and joining them together like lego blocks to arrive at the system you want.

Parts availability is just a constant PITA these days and don't get me started on the search/filter functions on RS/Farnell/etc.

 

On the plus side it's never been easier or cheaper to throw a board together in KiCAD (free) using the JLCPCB parts library and get it made & soldered together & posted to you by JLC for peanuts.

[elbekko]

29 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

there's a TON of ready-made modules on eBay and the like

That's a good shout, seems to give better results than googling stuff.

Although I was more thinking of schematics & component list to integrate into my own stuff. Build it myself, but with a proven circuit.

34 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

joining them together like lego blocks

That's what I'm struggling with at the moment, it feels like everything is 1x1 lego blocks, instead of a nice corner block

34 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

On the plus side it's never been easier or cheaper to throw a board together in KiCAD (free) using the JLCPCB parts library and get it made & soldered together & posted to you by JLC for peanuts.

Something like that would be preferable, indeed, but that would then require knowledge of the proper circuits, which is what I'm trying to find.

[FridgeFreezer]

https://hackaday.com/tag/creating-a-pcb-in-everything/

^ that walks you through some of it, a lot of the rest is just join-the-dots if you're using modules or copying example circuits.

There's a lot of youtubers sponsored by JLCPCB or PCBWay who've done videos on how to get boards made etc.

GreatScott is pretty good for general learning.

[henk]

I use Tinycad to document my electric stuf in the Defender. There are a lot of things available in their library