Have you ever examined a circuit board and wondered what a particular component is? Whether you're learning electronics, repairing a device, or just curious about how a PCB works, being able to quickly identify components is the essential first step.
Here I wanted to share a free, web-based tool I built that uses machine learning AI(Artificial Intelligence) to identify electronic components in real-time through your webcam. No downloads, no installations just open the webpage below link band hold the component up to your camera!
Electronics Component Identification with Webcam AI
This tool helps you recognize basic electronic components like resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, ICs, and LEDs—simply by holding them up to your webcam or pointing at a PCB. While it won't diagnose faults or tell you if a component is broken, it gives you something just as valuable: knowledge of what you're looking at.
This tool is the foundation for something much bigger. By mastering component identification first, we can eventually build towards:
- PCB inspection - Scanning entire boards to verify all components
- Fault detection - Identifying missing, misaligned, or burned components
- Assembly verification - Checking if the right component is in the right place
- Reverse engineering - Automatically mapping out circuit boards
- Repair assistance - Flagging components that look suspicious or out of specification
Technologies Powering Electronics Component Web App
📦 Simplified Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Frontend | HTML, CSS, JavaScript |
| Camera | WebRTC, MediaStream API |
| AI Model | Custom classifier (Roboflow) |
| Cloud | Roboflow Inference API |
| Communication | REST API, JSON |
| Hosting | Any static web server |
How the AI Was Trained
Dataset Creation: Thousands of component images collected and labeled
Annotation: Each image tagged with correct component class
Training: Model trained on Roboflow's infrastructure (GPU-accelerated)
Validation: Tested against unseen images for accuracy
Deployment: Exported to serverless API endpoint
Integration: Connected to web frontend via simple API calls
