Today, I’m proud to announce that I’ve uploaded the first preview build of Logicly, my digital logic simulator. I originally posted what I now call “the prototype” on my blog in late 2008. At the time, it was just a fun little experiment that I put together as a bit of nostalgia. One of my professors in college used a very simple Java applet to demonstrate logic gates in his computer architecture class, but he wanted something better. At the time, the project seemed daunting. However, with several years of real-world experience under my belt, it had become a fun weekend project.
Over the last couple of years, Logicly has received much interest from computer enthusiasts, students, and educators. Both Reddit and Hacker News linked to it and provided excellent feedback. Even now, my blog’s traffic and top search terms are still dominated by people looking for Logicly. I get a few emails every month with praise, feature requests, and even stories about how a some students are using Logicly with their thesis work.
Thanks to all this continued interest in Logicly, I feel that it’s time to add it bit more polish and release a desktop app that includes all the features that people consistently ask me to add. I have a bit more work ahead of me, but what’s there now already surpasses the prototype in a few areas. Things like multiple selection, a pan tool, and a couple new controls (a 4-bit digit, for instance) are the most obvious. I also spent a lot of time improving the simulation code, which leads to more consistency in propagation and timing.
There’s a lot more planned too.
- Saving and loading files. This is, by far, the most requested feature. It will only be available in the desktop app.
- Flip-flops. These are also a very popular request. I wanted to get them working in this preview build, but there are a couple more things to tweak, and it’s not worth delaying the preview just for these.
- Grid settings, such as size and snapping.
- Individual clock timing settings.
If you’re interested in future releases of Logicly, please subscribe to this blog, follow @logicly on Twitter, or like Logicly on Facebook. You can also sign up for the Logicly newsletter to get the announcement via email, if you prefer.