I’ve managed to get a fairly complex LED layout (for me) working, but now that I’m looking at transferring it from my bench over to the tray ceiling, I am frozen.
My current wiring is a mess. It works, and I think it’s as clean as it’s gonna get, but it’s jumble of connections and connectors that I’ve grown as I’ve added parts.
Does anyone have a software, tool or site that can help me draw out and lay out the various components? I’ve tried SmartDraw and circuit-diagram.org, but neither has an LED strip object, and it’s still too technical for me.
Ideally I’m looking for something as simple as GSlides/powerpoint with the snap anchors, but with the right icons and elements.
Or should I just suck it up and learn one of those other two?
The electrical drawing tool of choice for me would be KiCad as that lends itself all the way to designing PCB’s, but there is a learning curve to overcome.
You could also look at various drawing programs, such as AutoCAD, CorelDraw, GIMP, or even yEd which has worked well for me in a number of situations.
They’ll all require some time until you’re familiar with them and you’ll likely have to build your own library of relevant objects.
Try and start out your drawings in the simplest form, such as 3 boxes/objects - The MCU, The strip(s), and The PS.
From there you can start to complicate things with the Strip(s) expanding to 5 objects, 3 Power supplies, etc.
It covers the two problems in the first post. There’s no LED strip object to look for: any image can become a part. Take a photo or drawing of the strip, the power supply, the ESP32 or the fuse, and put pins on it where the real connections are (5V, GND, DATA). From there it works like the snap anchors you described: connect two pins and the wire routes itself, and it follows when you move a part. Parts you make stay in your library, so you only make each one once.
It doesn’t simulate anything; it’s only for drawing how things are wired.