PinConnect

An interactive pinout generator for PCBs. PinConnect turns a photo of a board into an interactive pinout diagram you can open in a browser or embed in a documentation site.

It is made of three tools, used in sequence:

• pinout-design: a browser-based designer that turns a board image into a TOML config.
• pinout-gen: a CLI that reads that config and generates a self-contained interactive HTML pinout.
• pinout-embed: an optional Markdown extension that embeds the generated HTML into MkDocs / Zensical sites.

You only need the first two for a working pinout; the third is for publishing to a Markdown docs site.

If you'd like to see a live demo of the generated pinouts, you can find it on this documentation website: https://docs.isiks.tech/Nevermore/SM3-PCB/#wiring

Quick start

1. Serve the designer and open it in your browser:

   cd pinout_design
   python -m http.server 8000   # then open http://localhost:8000

   Load a board image, draw a box over each connector, label the pins, and Save TOML.

2. Install the generator and render your config:

   pip install ./pinout_gen
   pinout-gen board.toml         # writes board.pinout.html

3. (Optional) Embed the result in an MkDocs / Zensical page — see the docs.

Full walkthrough: docs/getting-started.md.

Documentation

All guides live in the docs/ folder — start with the documentation index:

• Getting Started
• Concepts
• pinout-design
• pinout-gen
• pinout-embed

Repository layout

• pinout_design/: the visual designer (static web app).
• pinout_gen/: the pinout-gen CLI and connector type library.
• pinout_embed/: the Markdown embedding extension.
• docs/: documentation.

Todo

The project works and generates great looking pinouts already. Below are changes/features not implemented yet, planned to be implemented soon:

• Add female Sherlock connectors
• Add slide switch as a "connector" for highlighting its positions
• Add option to staircase pin names when pinout lines go to top/bottom to avoid overlaps to pinout-gen (there already is a auto-scale feature implemented for this, but this will work better for long pin names)
• Add theming to pinout-gen
• Update font of pinout-design to match the default pinout-gen theme (switch to Roboto)
• Improve how pinout-design handles undo/redo for position adjustments (add them as a state)
• Write a more detailed doc with screenshots for pinout-design
• Add a screenshot of the output to this document

License

This project is licensed under GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.

If you'd like to support the development of this and other open-source projects, you can donate on GitHub.