OnTrack: The PCB Design Podcast

AI PCB routing only works when the tool understands your design intent, and in this OnTrack Podcast episode Zach Peterson sits down with Alain-Sam Cohen and Nabil Chouba of InstaDeep's DeepPCB to find out what that actually takes. They explain why classic autorouters fail on configuration rather than on routing, how a reinforcement-learning routing engine paired with Cooper, a natural-language orchestrator, detects net classes, decoupling caps, reference planes, and USB impedance problems before a single trace is drawn, and where LLM-driven PCB-as-code tools fit alongside placement and routing.  Then they open one of Zach's own boards live, let Cooper flag what the design file left unspecified, and compare it with a run they let converge before the show. If you've watched a one-line AI prompt produce an epic hardware fail, this is the case for task-based AI in PCB design and the design knowledge you still need to bring to it. 📚 More from this Episode: - DeepPCB: https://deeppcb.ai  - InstaDeep: https://instadeep.com 💡 Watch Next: - AI PCB Autorouting: What's Real and What's Hype: https://youtu.be/YJTbsoxPg7E - AI PCB Layout vs. Human Design: The Honest Truth: https://youtu.be/qX29OWSYTmI - The Black Box Problem With AI PCB Layout Tools: https://youtu.be/JiR10b7f41g - Code-Based PCB Design with AI: Inside atopile: https://youtu.be/J1Dl5bUvm6E - When to Use an Autorouter in PCB Design: https://youtu.be/Hgl7DttRaoo 💡 Stay Connected: Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth tutorials and tips from  @AltiumAcademy   Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 👉 Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy?sub_confirmation=1 Don't forget to follow us on social to stay up-to-date on the latest Altium Academy content. 👉 Follow Altium on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@altiumdesigner 👉 Follow Altium on Twitter: https://twitter.com/altium 👉 Follow Altium on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/altium/ 👉 Follow Altium on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AltiumOfficial/ The Altium Academy is an online experience created to bring modern education to PCB Designers and Engineers all across the world. Here you can access a vast library of free training and educational content covering everything from basic design to advanced principles and step-by-step walkthroughs. Join industry legends as they share their career knowledge, review real-life design projects, or learn how to leverage one of Altium's leading design tools. No matter your level of experience, the Altium Academy can help you become a better Designer and Engineer! About Altium LLC Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products. #altium #pcbdesign #pcbrouting   

PCB assembly mistakes rarely start on the factory floor; they start in layout, and in this OnTrack Podcast episode three assembly-side veterans explain exactly which ones keep showing up. Zach Peterson talks with Mike Buetow (PCEA), Chrys Shea (Shea Engineering), and Daniel Stanphill (Aurora Boardworks) about padstacks pulled off the internet, QFN footprints with no room for solder, datasheets that were never validated on a line, and why the designer-to-assembler conversation so often never happens.  You'll also get a preview of the new PCB West 2026 circuit assembly track: solder paste types, stencil design, pick-and-place at both extremes (2 kg parts and 006003 passives), and the SMTA Ultra HDI test vehicle. Whether you design boards, source parts, or run an SMT line, this is the design-for-assembly reality check to watch before your next board goes to the CM. 📚 More from this Episode: - PCB West 2026 (Sept. 29 – Oct. 2, Santa Clara; free exhibition day Sept. 30): https://pcbwest.com  - Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA): https://pcea.net  - Shea Engineering Services: https://sheasmt.com - Aurora Boardworks: https://auroraboardworks.com - The D-Code Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@The-D-Code  - PCB West 2026 circuit assembly program (session list): https://pcea.net/2026/08/12/a-day-of-assembly-classes-at-pcb-west-2026/  - SMTA Ultra HDI Miniaturized Test Vehicle: https://ultrahdi.net  - IPC (IPC-SM-782 and land pattern standards): https://www.ipc.org    💡 Stay Connected: Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth tutorials and tips from  @AltiumAcademy   Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 👉 Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy?sub_confirmation=1 Don't forget to follow us on social to stay up-to-date on the latest Altium Academy content. 👉 Follow Altium on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@altiumdesigner 👉 Follow Altium on Twitter: https://twitter.com/altium 👉 Follow Altium on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/altium/ 👉 Follow Altium on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AltiumOfficial/ The Altium Academy is an online experience created to bring modern education to PCB Designers and Engineers all across the world. Here you can access a vast library of free training and educational content covering everything from basic design to advanced principles and step-by-step walkthroughs. Join industry legends as they share their career knowledge, review real-life design projects, or learn how to leverage one of Altium's leading design tools. No matter your level of experience, the Altium Academy can help you become a better Designer and Engineer! About Altium LLC Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products. #altium #pcbassembly #pcbwest   

Designing a custom power chip used to mean an ASIC budget and a year of NRE, but Renesas Power GreenPAK lets you configure one at your desk in minutes. In this OnTrack Podcast episode, host Zach Peterson talks with Sidney Chan, product marketing director in the Configurable Mixed Signal Division at Renesas, about how Power GreenPAK folds DC-DC converters, LDOs, and load switches into the same programmable platform engineers already use for power sequencing, reset ICs, and watchdog timing.  Sidney walks through a live camera demo built on the SLG51002, an eight-channel high-PSRR LDO, showing how supply noise turns into visible banding and artifacts on a CMOS image sensor and why clean rails matter for smartphones, automotive camera systems, and even endoscopes. He also covers the wider GreenPAK family, including AnalogPAK, HVPAK, Automotive GreenPAK, and the new ForgeFPGA line, plus what configurable converter architectures could unlock for system-level efficiency. If you select power components from a catalog distributor and requalify every time a rail changes, this is a genuinely different way to approach power management IC design. 📚 More from this Episode: - Renesas Power GreenPAK: https://www.renesas.com/en/products/programmable-logic/greenpak-programmable-mixed-signal-products/power-greenpak  - Go Configure Software Hub: https://www.renesas.com/en/software-tool/go-configure-software-hub  - Connect with Dima Mymrikov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dima-mymrikov-88133431/  - Renesas ForgeFPGA: https://www.renesas.com/en/products/programmable-logic  - Renesas AnalogPAK: https://www.renesas.com/en/products/programmable-logic/greenpak-programmable-mixed-signal-products/analogpak  - Renesas HVPAK: https://www.renesas.com/en/products/programmable-logic/greenpak-programmable-mixed-signal-products/hvpak  - Renesas SLG51002 (8-channel high-PSRR LDO): https://www.renesas.com/en/products/slg51002  💡 Watch Next: - Programmable Logic Made Easy: GreenPAK Tutorial with Dima Mymrikov: https://youtu.be/2b4TWE5zlB4 - GreenPAK for Automotive: Reliability, Integration & Real-World Demos: https://youtu.be/ZjqgSIMcCTA - Capacitor Self Resonance | Power Integrity in PCB Design: https://youtu.be/kvWHQmSML-4 💡 Stay Connected: Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth tutorials and tips from  @AltiumAcademy   Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 👉 Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy?sub_confirmation=1 Don't forget to follow us on social to stay up-to-date on the latest Altium Academy content. 👉 Follow Altium on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@altiumdesigner 👉 Follow Altium on Twitter: https://twitter.com/altium 👉 Follow Altium on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/altium/ 👉 Follow Altium on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AltiumOfficial/ The Altium Academy is an online experience created to bring modern education to PCB Designers and Engineers all across the world. Here you can access a vast library of free training and educational content covering everything from basic design to advanced principles and step-by-step walkthroughs. Join industry legends as they share their career knowledge, review real-life design projects, or learn how to leverage one of Altium's leading design tools. No matter your level of experience, the Altium Academy can help you become a better Designer and Engineer! About Altium LLC Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products. #altium #greenpak #powermanagement  

Marco Witzmann, Head of Requirements Portal at Altium, returns to the Altium OnTrack Podcast to show host Zach Peterson what the tool formerly known as Requirements Manager has become. In a live demo, Marco starts from a plain-language email about a wind-farm inspection drone and watches the new engineering assistant turn it into properly formulated requirements, complete with TBD placeholders instead of invented numbers. From there he breaks a high-level product spec down into mechanical, electronics, and flight software specifications, with parent-child links and full traceability generated automatically. Every change is proposed first and applied only when you approve it, so the agent never silently rewrites your project. The heart of the episode is the workflow every PCB designer recognizes: you are handed a hundred-page IMU specification and told to pick the MCU. Marco drag-and-drops the PDF into the AI-assisted importer, lets it separate real requirements from tables of contents and revision history, then asks the agent which requirements actually drive MCU selection. The answer comes back as a clean parameter-and-value spec — supply voltage, ambient temperature range, power budget, clock speed, end-to-end latency — linked back to the originals, and ready to drop straight into an Octopart parametric search. Marco and Zach also dig into what AI should and should not decide for you, why requirements work is really about faster iteration rather than perfect first drafts, how skills let a team standardize the way requirements get written, and what is next on the roadmap: API access, simpler ECAD integration, and per-project access control.  📚 More from this Episode: - Altium Requirements Portal: https://www.altium.com/capabilities/requirements/requirements-management - Requirements & Systems Portal documentation: https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-365/requirements-portal  - Altium 365: https://www.altium.com/altium-365  - Octopart parametric search: https://octopart.com  - The Nexar API: https://nexar.com/api  - Requirements in an Altium Designer project (ECAD integration): https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/requirements  - Altium Develop pricing and subscriptions: https://www.altium.com/develop/pricing  - Connect with Marco Witzmann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcowitzmann/   💡 Stay Connected: Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth tutorials and tips from  @AltiumAcademy   Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 👉 Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy?sub_confirmation=1 Don't forget to follow us on social to stay up-to-date on the latest Altium Academy content. 👉 Follow Altium on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@altiumdesigner 👉 Follow Altium on Twitter: https://twitter.com/altium 👉 Follow Altium on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/altium/ 👉 Follow Altium on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AltiumOfficial/ The Altium Academy is an online experience created to bring modern education to PCB Designers and Engineers all across the world. Here you can access a vast library of free training and educational content covering everything from basic design to advanced principles and step-by-step walkthroughs. Join industry legends as they share their career knowledge, review real-life design projects, or learn how to leverage one of Altium's leading design tools. No matter your level of experience, the Altium Academy can help you become a better Designer and Engineer! About Altium LLC Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products. #altium #pcbdesign #aiengineering  ⏱

Altium Develop brings the full Altium Designer experience — plus multi-board and harness design and cloud collaboration — to individual designers and small teams, without paying for enterprise features you'll never use: https://www.altium.com/develop?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=ontrack-podcast&utm_content=altium-is-coming-home-to-the-designer After 40 years as effectively a single-product company, Altium has repackaged its offering into Altium Develop, Teams, and Enterprise — and a lot of individual designers are asking what it means for them. In this episode of the Altium OnTrack Podcast, host Zach Peterson sits down with Lawrence Romine, senior director of marketing at Altium, to explain the "homecoming": a deliberate return of focus to the individual PCB designer who made Altium Designer the industry standard in the first place. Lawrence traces the company's story from its founding in Hobart, Tasmania, through the rise of Altium 365 during COVID, to why the enterprise pivot left some solo designers feeling left behind — and how the new packaging is meant to fix exactly that. You'll get a clear breakdown of the three offerings — Develop (a PCB-centric, "you choose it" proposition for up to five users), Teams (out-of-the-box collaboration), and Enterprise (fully governed, tailored deployments for regulated industries like automotive, medical, and aerospace) — all built on the same Altium Designer and Altium 365 you already know. Lawrence and Zach dig into pricing , why you shouldn't pay for capabilities you'll never use, how Altium prioritizes new feature development, and a hint at a new Altium Designer release that should feel a lot more like the big annual splash releases of 2015–2020. If you're an individual designer, a contract shop, or a small team wondering where you fit, this one's for you. 📚 More from this Episode: - Altium 365: https://www.altium.com/altium-365  - Valispace (requirements management): https://www.valispace.com/  - Connect with Lawrence: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-romine-2808544/ 💡 Watch Next: - Altium Develop: Returning to Our Roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhoxD7Ae7tI - Over the Wall Engineering is Disappearing with Lawrence Romine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9OmMd-EwYU - OnTrack PCB Design Podcast 2025 Year in Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoLofrU8jsY 💡 Stay Connected: Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth tutorials and tips from  @AltiumAcademy   Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 👉 Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy?sub_confirmation=1 Don't forget to follow us on social to stay up-to-date on the latest Altium Academy content. 👉 Follow Altium on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@altiumdesigner 👉 Follow Altium on Twitter: https://twitter.com/altium 👉 Follow Altium on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/altium/ 👉 Follow Altium on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AltiumOfficial/ The Altium Academy is an online experience created to bring modern education to PCB Designers and Engineers all across the world. Here you can access a vast library of free training and educational content covering everything from basic design to advanced principles and step-by-step walkthroughs. Join industry legends as they share their career knowledge, review real-life design projects, or learn how to leverage one of Altium's leading design tools. No matter your level of experience, the Altium Academy can help you become a better Designer and Engineer! About Altium LLC Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products. #altium #pcbdesign #ontrackpodcast