Need to buy Octapart API for KiCost

[yashrk]

Hey friends,

I am trying to run new KiCost but it now requires Octapart API key and also the user has to register with Octapart to get a working key.
After a few emails with the Octaparts team, they let me know that it is a paid service.
These are following tiers

• $25/month up to 1,000 HTTP Requests per month
• $50/month up to 5,000 HTTP Requests per month
• $100/month up to 12,000 HTTP Requests per month
• $200/month up to 25,000 HTTP Requests per month

Does anyone know how to get the old version of KiCost working on windows?

[paulvdh]

In the thread https://forum.kicad.info/t/kicost-going-quiet/15000 Aisler posted:

@aisler

Just came across this thread and maybe we can help out a bit.
As mentioned before, our Precious Parts offering makes use of DigiKey and Farnells APIs natively. We’d be happy to provide open access to our part search free of charge.
Does that sound like a plan? If so we’d have to build an open API for this.

As we do not make our money with advertising we’ve no plans to charge or (like Octopart) lock down the API.

I was surprised that no one seemed to jump to that opportunity.

[hildogjr]

KiCost is facing a big problem, we have no people to help coding the new features or even fix issues.

KiCost - call of developers

Hi every one, I am one collaborator of KiCost (script for generating part-cost spreadsheets for circuit boards developed with KiCad) https://pypi.org/project/kicost/), idealized by @devbisme. We released version 1.0.3, powered by Octopart API, and are close to release 1.0.4 with some new features (warning for obsolete parts, datasheet links, …). Nowadays we are experiencing some issues relative to integration and would like to call contributors to help us to fix and improve with the next …

Since @debisme and I have our own jobs, we can’t dedicate our full day to this improve the tool and, more critical, keep the scrape routine running.

A new opportunity emerged by @kasbah and its Kitspace Partinfor service (see last posts on KiCost on Windows can't run GUI) that can provide a centralized service, leveaing KiCost with the front end application. Again, I am little out of my schedule on it, cause of my job, PhD, …

[hildogjr]

Could be a interesting opportunity. But some one needs to help develop test and validate a beta. For the last few month, I have been the only one to make support to KiCost and it haven’t be enough.

[kasbah]

@paulvdh

I was surprised that no one seemed to jump to that opportunity.

We did jump on this opportunity for Kitspace and it will be integrated into Partinfo once it’s made public (anxiously awaiting news from @aisler ). Meanwhile developers can start developing Partinfo integrations, as @hildogjr is doing for KiCost and we can refine and adjust the Partinfo API and add additional data sources.