KiCost new motor (faster price BoMs)

Forum members, we are reshaping KiCost (the third part tool to get the cost spreadsheet for yours KiCad schematic) using the distributors APIs.
For now it is beta https://github.com/xesscorp/KiCost/tree/octopart and we appreciate feedback from the users.

To install (if you are not familiar with Terminal-Git), follow the normal installation procedure at


and after replace the file for that one in the first link.

We also appreciate feedback on GUI (window) interface.

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Sidebar:

For those of us who aren’t super familiar with python environments, which installation method is preferred, easy_install or pip? As I suspect, everything is a compromise, what are the benefits and issues with each method. Does one handle dependencies better than the other?

For most people and environments, pip is preferred over easy_install. You can google “easy_install versus pip” if you really want to know why.

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pip provide some git integration. I use mainly to test the last code commit of KiCost before release it. For example, you could install (if have git in your PC)

pip install -U git+https://github.com/xesscorp/KiCost.git@octopart # `-U` to upgrade if you already have the package installed.

Worked excellent for me. From hours scrapping and failing on mouser and recently on digikey, to a full BOM ready in 10 seconds!

Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, it was an inconvenience keeping the web scrapers in sync with the changes at the distributors. Moving to Octopart eliminates that and improves the speed by 100x. The only real downside is that if Octopart ever goes down or makes their policies restrictive, then KiCost goes with it. For now, though, things look good.

Thanks to @hildogjr for keeping KiCost development moving along. I haven’t been as involved with it for the past 18 months or so.

@devbisme, this is the reason of code community, we share effort and time in a common goal. :grinning:
My next steps on KiCost include the currency conversion, asked by some users and for me (because the different currency of my local distributors).

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For that one that want to test, the current Nightly code already does the currency conversion (using --currency EUR for example). It just need improvement to get the most recent rate.

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