If you are interested in electrical engineering and building gadgets, it doesn't matter if you have an engineering degree or not. There are software tools out there that can give shape to your vision, whether you are an enthusiast, a businessman or an actual engineer. Of course, it is quite likely that you are using a few applications already, but check out the following list and perhaps some of them can do a better job than your current selection of tools.

Electrodriod

Electrodriod can be downloaded and used for free on both iOS and Android, but in order to use all the features, there’s a small fee that you need to pay for the Pro version, which is absolutely worth it.

The app is a lot of things at once and more like a digital tool box with multiple smaller tools to aid in electrical projects. It includes a very handy scientific calculator, designed to aid electrical engineering students, professionals and hobbyists in particular.

Blynk

In case you have ever worked on a Raspberry Pi project and not used Blynk to operate the microcontrollers from your smartphone, you have definitely missed out on saving a lot of time and adding creativity to your project.

The easy-to-use and beautifully designed user interface of Blynk can also be used with ESP8266, Particle Core, Particle Photon, TinyDuino, Wicked WildFire and, of course, Arduino. The only thing more beautiful than the Blynk UI is the fact that the app is free to download and use in its entirety!

Geppetto Software

This one requires a PC or a Mac to be operated in its full functionality, but that’s only because it’s a fully-fledged, industrial grade application.

The Geppetto software from Gumstix is especially designed to be used by hobbyists or entrepreneurs without intricate electrical engineering knowledge, as it makes designing and ordering PCBs or other types of boards a quick and easy process. You will not even need to trace the routes on your boards, as it supports flawless auto routing.

Datasheets

As its name suggests, Datasheets is a component database for electronics, and it enables the user to search for and download the component datasheets that they need for any given project.

It’s a fast electronic components search engine and one that is particularly favored because of the fact that users can search components by their numbers and not just the names. Other features, such as updated history of each component for BOM creation, are also available on the search engine.

It is to be noted that while smartphones and tablets have come a long way, they are still not capable of replacing computers, which is why some of the applications cannot function fully without the resources of a proper PC or Mac. The smartphone and tablet apps may help you get started, but if you are serious about your hobby or business, you will have to power on that laptop!