How to share Projects

[chris9]

Hello,

sometimes I create KiCad projects that are commercially worthless but might be useful for some users with similar interests.
I would share these projects and I see that the KiCad website has the “made with kicad” kategory for this purpose.
But when I read the dedicated instructions I am completely lost (I am just an old analog electronics guy with some assembler knowledge).

Wouldnt it be nice if the KiCad site could offer an easier way to simply upload projects ?

[Wim4rk]

Hi,

While I’m no expert in KiCad, I think you should look at Github. There are many KiCad projects there already. It’s also possible to expand on projects posted there, so if somebody finds your project interesting but need their own spin on it, they can easily expand on your work.

All the best!

[paulvdh]

KiCad Project Explorer aka Reporecon finds around 28000 KiCad projects on github. Unfortunately Github remains more popular then Gitlab or other GIT collection sides after microsofts takeover.

KiCad Project Explorer

I extracted data on 19,000 Github projects that mention “kicad” and placed it in a BAT (big-ass table). ChatGPT and I built a single-page Javascript app to search, filter, and sort the projects. You can view them here. (The page takes 3-4 seconds to load.) Some of the projects you can find just by randomly scrolling are quite interesting. This repo contains the code for the repository data extractor and the Javascript app.

RepoRecon

I do not know the extend of the goals behind the Made with KiCad section on the KiCad website. I guess that they only want high quality projects that show off KiCad’s capabilities. For something like “all sorts of KiCad projects” some system would be needed so people can manage and add their own projects. A bit similar to:
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects
https://community.aisler.net/c/great-projects/great-projects/76
https://dirtypcbs.com/store/designer/pcbs?p=4
https://oshwlab.com/
https://www.elektormagazine.com/labs

There are also PCB design suites that have an online version (altium, EasyEDA) and for those, projects made by users are added automatically to a database, and are viewable and browsable by others. I looked at them some time ago. On first sight the amount of projects look impressive (several thousand), but there are lots of copies / forks of the same project, half made projects by someone just trying something out, or projects that are so simple it’s hardly worth copying (a blinking LED).

[devbisme]

@paulvdh

On first sight the amount of projects look impressive (several thousand), but there are lots of copies / forks of the same project, half made projects by someone just trying something out, or projects that are so simple it’s hardly worth copying (a blinking LED).

This is also true for the projects scraped by RepoRecon, but you can correct for that by sorting and looking at projects with a lot of stars and/or forks.