Vibe Hardware

Recently I subscribed to devin because we were migrating to this AI dev tool at work and because I was curious about what it could do. Separately, a friend of mine gave me a Cheap Yellow Display some time ago to work on. So last week I tasked devin with turning the CYD into a weather station and we both upgraded it to have a predicted radar feature while we brewed some beer last weekend.

All of this has worked way better than I expected and I am surprised, amazed, worried, and consumed by it.

Today I have begun the pinnacle project that one can possibly vibe create: a full hardware design for an ESP32 powered e-paper display, complete with firmware. Devin E-Paper Display. As I type this blog post manually, like a cave man, devin is hard at work creating a Kicad compatible schematic. Prior to this work, we went back and forth on hardware selection so that I could solder it all down and so that ratings on each component weren’t exceeded.

Perhaps in the next few weeks we’ll see if one is now able to “vibe-code” hardware too.