CS 470 / active engineering project
From pixels to pin holes.
One misplaced wire can break an entire circuit. We're working on software that looks at a student's breadboard, reconstructs what is connected, and helps pinpoint the fault.
130 ELECTRICAL NODESONE COLUMN SHIFT
DIFFERENT CIRCUIT
01 / The challenge
Knowing what a component is doesn't tell you where it's connected.
The software needs to identify real electrical connections—not just label objects in a photograph. Students can place parts in many correct configurations, and a wire moved by one 2.54 mm pitch can change the entire circuit.
Find the holes
Correct the camera angle and map every visible position onto a known breadboard grid.
Read the connections
Identify components, their endpoints, and which holes those endpoints actually occupy.
Check the circuit
Compare electrical connectivity to the intended lab and return a specific fix—or abstain.
02 / The architecture
Most of the reasoning exists. One critical bridge doesn't.
The previous developers built and tested a board normalizer, electrical circuit model, checker, and Arduino-assisted diagnostics. The missing piece is generating the circuit data automatically from camera images.
03 / Where things stand
A working foundation. An unfinished perception layer.
Status snapshot: November 3, 2026. Model predictions have not yet been reproduced by the current team.
04 / The current technical question
Can we reliably read an entire circuit from a real camera image?
Resistor-only detection is an early experiment, not the finished product. The bigger problems are overlapping leads, uncertain hole placement, wire-end association, and the way small errors compound across a complete board.