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Project Workflow

Creating and building new embedded gadgets with Visual Designer for Raspberry Pi is a lot of fun and much easier than you might think. Visual Designer is unique in integrating the hardware design and software design into a single software package which vastly simplifies the project design workflow.
The first stage is to select your 'virtual hardware' from the Peripheral Gallery. Choose from a library of popular Raspberry Pi hats from Adafruit and Pimoroni as well as dozens of loose sensors, buttons, LED's and other widgets. When you add these to your project they will automatically be placed on the schematic and connected to the Raspberry Pi. High level control methods for the peripherals will also be added to Visual Designer.

You then design your software as a flowchart so you can easily drag and drop these methods along with decisions, delays and assignments to drive the connected hardware from the Raspberry Pi.
Compile and simulate at the press of the button, making use of our renowned simulation and debugging technology to watch your design come to life on screen.
Finally, transfer to the physical Raspberry Pi hardware with a single mouse click and see it working first time in the real world.
  • Design your hardware by selecting hats or breakout boards from the Peripheral Gallery.
  • Create the controlling program by drag and drop flowchart design or Python script.
  • Simulate the entire system in Proteus with world class debugging tools.
  • Program the equivalent Raspberry Pi® hardware at the press of a button.

Raspberry Pi Hats

The following is a list of Raspberry Pi hats pre-supplied with the Visual Designer software. When you add one of these shields from the Peripheral Gallery the circuitry will automatically be placed on the schematic for you and connected up to the Raspberry Pi base board. Additionally, Visual Designer will provide some high level access functions to the shield (e.g. drawBitmap(), playAudio(), spinForwards()) to make it easy to control complex hardware from the flowchart. This is the simplest and fastest way to work inside Visual Designer.

  • Adafruit 16 Channel PWM Servo Hat.
  • Adafruit Stepper Motor Hat.
  • Adafruit 2 Channel Relay Numator Hat.
  • Pimoroni Automation Hat.
  • More coming soon....
  • Adafruit DC Motor Hat.
  • Adafruit DC and Stepper Motor Hat.
  • Adafruit 4-Channel Relay Breakout Board.
  • Pimoroni PiGlow Hat.
  • Grove Modules

    Watch Video

    Grove is a modular electronic platform for quick prototyping. Every module has one function, such as touch sensing, creating audio effect and so on. Just plug the modules you need to the base shield, then you are ready to test your ideas.
    Visual Designer supports many of the Grove modules and sensors, with auto-placement on the schematic and high level access functions on the flowchart.

  • Grove 128x64 OLED Display Module.
  • Grove Push button.
  • Differential Amplifier Module.
  • Grove Buzzer Module.
  • Grove Proximity sensor IR.
  • Grove LED Bar.
  • Grove Relay module.
  • Grove Luminance Sensor Module.
  • Grove Relay Module.
  • Grove Sound/Volume level sensor.
  • Grove Touch Sensor Module.
  • Grove 4 digit numeric display.
  • Grove Buzzer.
  • Grove single LED Module (Blue, Green, Yellow, Red).
  • Grove Analog converter.
  • Grove RGB LCD (No simulated RGB functionality).
  • Grove Light sensor.
  • Grove Rotary Angle Potentiometer sensor.
  • Grove Slide switch.
  • Grove Thermometer.
  • Grove Voltage Divider Module.
  • Breakout Boards

    Breakout boards are interesting and useful small blocks (often single component) of circuitry. When selected from the Peripheral Gallery they are autoplaced on the schematic and connected to the Raspberry Pi board. You also get easy control methods to drive the peripherals from the flowchart. e.g. a read() and a write() function are provided for the SD Card breakout board. Breakouts allow users to be a little more creative but also require a greater understanding of the pin and memory resources of the processor on the Raspberry Pi.

  • 4-Channel Analog to Digital Converter breakout.
  • 8-channel Analog to Digital Converter breakout.
  • Buzzer breakout board.
  • Piezo Sounder breakout board.
  • RGB Common Cathode LED.
  • Raspberry Pi Camera Module.
  • GPIO Expander breakout.
  • Momentary Action Push Button.
  • Single LED's (blue, yellow, green, red).
  • RGB Common Anode LED.
  • SPDT slide switch breakout.
  • TFT Display Breakout.
  • View the schematic Design to see the physical peripherals at work.

    Schematic Design

    Advanced users may find that they need more flexibility that than provided by the pre-made hats and breakout modules. Visual Designer also includes the thousands of embedded peripherals developed for Proteus VSM so users can create their own hardware directly on the schematic.
    Meanwhile, from a programming viewpoint Visual Designer provides access to the low level Raspberry Pi via CPU methods meaning that you can control the hardware using method calls such as digitalWrite() and
    You can even convert the project to Python script and then code your program in Python rather than with flowchart blocks, although you should be aware that in this case you need to have a clear understanding of the supported libraries in Proteus..

    Supported Libraries

    Unlike Arduino or other Proteus VSM families the Raspberry Pi is a computer, not a microcontroller. It is running a copy of Linux and can perform any number of general purpose computing tasks - none of which are supported in Proteus. Proteus support for Raspberry PI is limited to its role as the engine for embedded design projects.

    When you are working inside Visual Designer you don't need to worry about this. Anything that you do in flowchart design will be supported automatically in both simulation and on the real Raspberry Pi hardware. However, if you choose to convert to Python and write your programs in Python you need to be aware of what is supported by Proteus. For example, Linux File I/O, anything connecting to the GUI layer or low level hardware access commands will not work because Proteus does not simulate the Linux OS running on the Raspberry Pi. More technically, we support the low level rPi libraries detailed here. A huge number of Python libraries are therefore also supported because they are built on top of these low level libraries - for example, all of the libraries for the Adafruit and Pimoroni hats are supported as are the Grove libraries.
    If you're not sure about this we recommend you stick to flowchart design where everything you do will be supported !
    • Supports the smbus library.
    • Supports the pygame library.
    • Supports the wiringpi libraries.
    • Supports the RPi.GPIO libraries.
    • Supports the spidev library.

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