How-tos and workflows for putting an agent to work on your bench.
Newest first, as we log them.
15 d ago
JLCPCB's guide shows Claude Code designing a 5 A XL4015 buck converter in KiCad 10 through the kicad-mcp-pro server. Claude built a 16-net schematic and routed a 63 by 33 mm board with an A* router it wrote in Python. A netlist check caught an ISENSE to ISET short that ERC only warned about. The guide says nothing was fabricated.
18 d ago
Andreas Spiess's 18-minute video shows Claude Code taking ESP32 firmware from a written specification to passing tests on a Raspberry Pi testbench. The agent writes and builds the firmware, flashes it to boards on the bench, runs tests over Wi-Fi, MQTT, BLE and RF, and fixes failures until the tests pass. The skills and testbench code are open source.
35 d ago
Jacob Beningo gave Claude Code his Zephyr skills and a serial-port MCP server, then had it debug a sensor application on an NXP FRDM-MCXA156. The agent first blamed the hardware, and Beningo found the Click board mounted backward. Claude then traced readings of -45 C and 0% humidity to a conversion-timing bug. A screenshot shows its 83-sample check.
38 d ago
Synacl's 2.5-minute video shows claude.ai writing a macro that runs on an ESP32 flashed with Synacl's gateway firmware. Claude connects through a custom MCP connector, creates a GPIO device and writes a 5-step macro. Its first run is refused until a person grants 2 permissions; then the board's GPIO 2 LED blinks. Synacl made the demo for its own product.
45 d ago
Tech-AD-venture's 23-minute video walks through using AI agents in VS Code for STM32 firmware, contrasting autocomplete with task-based agents. Tools covered include GitHub Copilot, Claude, Codex and PlatformIO. An STM32 RTOS example runs from requirement to review. Its description lists MCP hardware access as a possibility; we could not confirm on-board debugging in the video.
45 d ago
JLCPCB's blog documents GPT-6 Astra designing a 44 x 34 mm two-layer TPA3116D2 stereo amplifier board in KiCad 10. Starting from datasheets and a brief, it ended with zero ERC, DRC and parity errors, with some check categories disabled. The page says the routed layout was reused from an earlier task. The board was never fabricated.
59 d ago
Sergio Marin built a flash lab in which an Orange Pi 3 LTS controls a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 for a coding agent. Through transistors it presses the power button and sets the boot mode, and it handles USB flashing and the serial console. He writes that clean flashes exposed a Wi-Fi bug a saved profile had hidden.
2 mo ago
In a Design News article, Jacob Beningo describes three tricks for using AI agents in embedded development. He recommends putting debuggers and logic analyzers behind MCP servers and grounding driver code in datasheets through retrieval. He power-cycles boards with uhubctl, a Yepkit YKUSH hub or two BK Precision 1685B supplies. The article reports no measured results.
2 mo ago
Two Markdown files in a CC0 repo guide Claude Code from a breadboard-proven Arduino circuit to a fabricated KiCad board. CLAUDE.md points the agent at a playbook in which it checks each part, writes one Python generator for schematic and board, and clears ERC and DRC. The author says every rule came from boards that shipped.
2 mo ago
Tulip Tree Technology has an AI coding agent write a hello-world for an STM32F030 and run it on Emerson, the company's own hardware emulator. The 8-minute video uses emctl to check that the firmware ran correctly, not just that it compiled. It also covers what Emerson models and what it leaves out. No physical board appears.
2 mo ago
Espressif published a four-hour workshop on using AI coding agents in Cursor or VS Code for ESP-IDF v6.0.2 work on an ESP32-C5-DevKitC. Six assignments cover agent setup with the Espressif documentation MCP server, spec-driven prompts, token use and debugging. An optional exercise decodes LED frames from a Saleae Logic 2 capture. We found no captures or photos.
3 mo ago
In an Octopart video, Ari Mahpour gives Claude Code one prompt and an attached Analog Discovery 2. Running Opus 4.8, it upgrades a Vivado 2018 design to 2025.2 and programs a Digilent Arty A7 in about 15 minutes. Mahpour then saves the session as a CLAUDE.md file and skills; a fresh session repeats the bring-up in seconds.
3 mo ago
RRF_Claude collects plain-English guides for non-programmers doing hardware work with Claude Code. One compiles RepRapFirmware for Duet3D printer boards on Windows or macOS and adds features to it. Another wires two PN5180 NFC readers to an ESP32 while the agent writes firmware for Bambu Lab and OpenPrintTag spool tags. The repo shows no photos or build results.
3 mo ago
The FPGA Developer blog describes giving Claude Code control of programming, UART and power cycling on an AMD FPGA bench. In the post's example, the agent ports a reference design to a new dev board, then tests and fixes it there. The author says such ports take a few hours. The post also covers token use and hooks.
3 mo ago
JetsonHacks shows Claude Code on a Jetson AGX Orin programming a headless Jetson Orin Nano over SSH. The 13-minute video sets up VS Code and Claude Code, then installs NVIDIA's Jetson Device Skills, agent instructions and scripts for diagnostics, memory tuning, LLM serving and video work on a live Jetson. The skills also work with Codex and Cursor.
3 mo ago
In a German video, Stefan Draeger compares Claude Code with the Claude.ai chat on an Arduino UNO R3 and an ESP32-C3 Super Mini. Claude.ai writes a sketch inside the chat, while Claude Code works on a project's files directly. Draeger says generated code still has to be checked and tested. A blog post goes with the 7-minute video.
4 mo ago
Martin Falch of CSS Electronics shows a Claude Code skill that decodes proprietary CAN signals into DBC files with a CANsub.2 interface. The skill matches bus bits against a reference, such as OBD2 data, dashboard video read by OCR or hand-logged gauge positions, and fits scale and offset. The 31-minute video runs it on car logs and a gauge bench.
4 mo ago
Linutronix describes an off-the-shelf AI agent that tests embedded boards in its lab through a small MCP server. In the example session the agent reserves a board, flashes it, reads the console and power-cycles it after a bad flash. The post argues that the safety comes from the lab underneath. It shows one screenshot and no logs.
4 mo ago
Ricardo F. Tafas Jr of Espressif describes building Zephyr provisioning over BLE and SoftAP for the M5Stack ESP DualKey with Cursor. He tested each step on the bench through build, flash and UART traces. His practices include specs first, proving a module in a sample app, a journal of failed fixes and no edits to upstream Zephyr.
4 mo ago
Bricolo2.0 shows how to connect Arduino CLI and Home Assistant to an AI agent through the arduino-mcp and ha-mcp servers, in French. He connects both servers to Antigravity and opencode. In the 16-minute video the agent writes and flashes an ESP32 project and builds a Home Assistant control panel, which he compares with the manual method.
