It's amazing what you can see just by looking

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Searching through recent KiCad repositories and I found this set of tutorials by the IEEE section of UCF. One tutorial shows how to use KiCad 7.0 to design an RGB light-strip controller. It has a set of 50 slides and the design files.

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Here’s some more recently-revised and unsung KiCad repos:

  • edgy_boards: A collection of testable, shareable and reusable basic blocks built with KiCad.
  • kicad-hs: A Haskell library for reading and writing Kicad PCB files. It also includes a handy utility for replicating parts of a layout.
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kicad-skip is a new Python library focused on scripted manipulations of schematics (and other) kicad source files and allows any item to be edited in a hopefully intuitive way.

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  • I searched this forum and didn’t see any mention of Part-DB-server. From it’s README:

Part-DB is an Open-Source inventory management system for your electronic components. It is installed on a web server and so can be accessed with any browser without the need to install additional software.

  • kicad-parts-placer is a script that lets you place components on a PCB by applying a file containing centroid coordinates. It also groups the components so you can’t accidentally change their positions with respect to one another.
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OK, you don’t see this too often: a KiCad PCB for detecting the wingbeats of flies.

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Today I found:

  • Project piCo: a KiCad project for a Pi Pico clone (now on version 3) with a USB-C connector.
  • KiVar: a PCBNEW plugin for handling board variants through the use of variation rules embedded within symbols or footprints. (This has been mentioned on the forum a few times.)
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Coincidentally, KiVar is available through the PCM since today. So everybody who needs assembly variant switching is invited to give it a try (check out the documentation first) and to discuss ideas in the issue tracker.
Thank you Dave for the mention. :blush:

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  • SCuM Board: I have no idea what this does. I just like the name.
  • RFT-kicad-library: This is a great set of symbols and footprints if you want to practice your German.
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Hello,

You motivated me to have a look around on my own :slight_smile: . Here is the result so far:

I am glad I did it. I found a few interesting nuggets actually :slight_smile: .

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I used to run PartDB, but a few years ago switched to Inventree
Does just about everything you want for a inventree management system. A bit of a learning curve but have never looked back and use it to manage all my stock and KiCad project builds.

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That’s a long list! Which ones are the nuggets?

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Well, I made it not-curated on purpose. Trying to depict the overall picture of what people do/need around KiCad (and even what they were doing, as there are also a few deprecated ones).

You can use filters and sorts just above the table header to digest it in smaller pieces.

As for the nuggets, I meant it for my own area of current interests ^^.
But I was surprised at how many projects out there are parsing kicad files (some bruteforcing the problem, other taking elegant approaches).
Quite a few are also trying to transfer common software practices like composition and testing (many kinds of testing! Before and after production).

There seems to be also some emulation around what I called “Code2HW” in the table (could also have called it “software-defined netlist” :smiley: ). Quite a potential for things like complex parametrisation of a reusable/composable design. But to me these projects seems a bit “locked” by being all-or-nothing. Ie. not yet any hybrid way of mixing parts in schematic with parts in code.

(You seemed to have been quite prolific on these matters actually :slight_smile: )

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  • PCB-Prototyping Catalog: A collection of 74 (so far) hardware electronics for Smart Devices, A.I. enabled. Designed in Kicad, and ready to download.
  • KiCAD-ProcessAutomation: A set of scripts for performing various operations on KiCad projects. Would seriously benefit from a more expansive README.
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  • kicad_openems_pipeline: An attempt to create a pipeline for RF projects using KiCAD and OpenEMS. Uses the Antmicro gerber2ems utility mentioned here.
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  • Awesome Electronics: Just like the name says: “a curated list of awesome resources for Electronic Engineers and hobbyists”. Contains a bunch of KiCad-related stuff.
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Two KiCad utilities I saw on Twitter:

Use the first utility to define a board outline. Then use the second to generate the OpenSCAD for an enclosure for the board.

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  • Ki365: Provide a browser-based environment for viewing, documenting, and collaborating on KiCad projects. (This seems to be an independent reboot of this previous effort.)
  • ET: An ECAD-Tool for complex schematics and layouts. It has no GUI (but one is under development), so I have no idea how PCBs are designed with it. Written in Ada (yikes!).
  • kicad-testpoints-pcm: This plugin generates a JigsApp compatible test point report for generating bed-of-nails testers. Similar to the CLI tool kicad-testpoints except it can be used entirely within the KiCAD user interface.
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