I've never really used their search in general, can't comment on it. I feel like most "piece part" searches are pretty terrible. I would just use Digikey and slowly set all the filters you asked for. Every other "pretty" tool (Octopart, SandSquid, SupplyFrame, it goes on and on) still doesn't help me too much with design exploration.
However, I have used their libraries many times over and they are absolutely not terrible. Altium's IPC generator is nice, but that's only for at the office. Personal stuff at home? SnapEDA + Kicad makes my personal projects actual projects and not just lessons in database management. I spent like 20-30% of my time just making symbols and footprints. That's not the actual fun or interesting design work, it's just the boring stuff in between. Very glad SnapEDA gets rid of that tedious step for me.
Which is a total shame, because those labels are the best discovery engines! If you want a great source of new content, that's effectively their full time job. The distribution and content quality of Tiny Engines, Topshelf Records, Polyvinyl is so so much better than anything Spotify will try to algorithm up for me.
(typing this while rocking my Fat Wreck jacket and playing Direct Hit!)
I can't seem to find it, but in the past year, I read an article on how cheap compilations (could have been Fat Music) were a really effective way to promote bands in that genre. Bands would talk about doing shows, and once they play the song on the compilation CD, everyone sings along.
You can still look at those releases and use spotify. No one is forcing you to look at their half baked playlists. Personally, I think the user playlists are the best part of the entire service.
My mind is blown! I've always associated Linear with precision work, can't believe it was all built on eBay equipment. Doesn't seem very Jim Williams...
While manufacturer's may have very small deviations in their footprints, by and large almost every IC conforms to some kind of JEDEC compliant package. From there, IPC-7351B [1] has mathematical recommendations on footprints ranging from Class 1 (minimum required) to Class 3 A/B (ultra-reliable). Obviously those are just suggestions, but manufacturers have been aligning more and more with them. My daily ECAD/EDA tool is Altium, and I can't remember I had to manually make an IC footprint. I use their IPC Wizard[2] to make it all for me. As a bonus, I get a nice STEP model too with my export.
While I think your assessment is correct, I do want to note that it's not like starting with Eagle, Altium, Orcad, etc is going to be easier. Just jumping into a complex, domain specific piece of software is tough, but totally worth it here.
Right - the problems attacked by these programs are inherently hard, I think. Some projects care a lot about things that are completely irrelevant in others (BOM management, creepages, RF concerns), etc. Any given component might have a single schematic symbol, multiple footprints, and several parameters which may or may not change with either of those (flash size/temperature rating/etc). Then, what's the right way to attach any library changes to the project where they are applied, how do you handle changes...
Not necessarily. I've never heard of anyone doing it for space (maybe SpaceX?) but you could have an SDR driving a massive MIMO/beamforming array. The SDR can then dynamically "change the antenna" (change the radiation pattern) with a fixed front-end.
Yeah, it would require quite a bit. Note that while it can input a massive frequency band (10M to 3.5G), the sampling rate is quite small (~31MS/s). Would work much better as a spectrum analyzer than a time domain viewer.
You can definitely use it as an oscilloscope, but it's non-trivial and has many limitations. Recommend getting a cheapo analog one, or if you're already at the normal SDR price range, just going for a Rigol
However, I have used their libraries many times over and they are absolutely not terrible. Altium's IPC generator is nice, but that's only for at the office. Personal stuff at home? SnapEDA + Kicad makes my personal projects actual projects and not just lessons in database management. I spent like 20-30% of my time just making symbols and footprints. That's not the actual fun or interesting design work, it's just the boring stuff in between. Very glad SnapEDA gets rid of that tedious step for me.