Semi-welcome to the club. Work-life imbalance is great. 
Seriously speaking. I think that part of the appeal of this forum is to get back networking with other like-minded nerds. Also I have been doing electronics for ~57 years and do not want to stop now.
Yes, but the ways and means of sharing have changed. Github/Gitlab facilitate collaboration. People can view your project, clone your repo, fork it, submit changes, raise issues, have discussions, etc. etc. and all this is public, unless is a private to a group, which would be the mode for a company. Or they would have their private git repo servers. All this is more than an exchange of zip files, PMs and posts in a forum can provide.
Thanks, but:
My understanding of github is that it is a place where KiCad bugs are logged and it is used for KiCad project version control. It is probably used for a lot of other things, but I am not into any of that. Aside from having posted some KiCad bugs, I would need to start from square one to learn to use github. Over the years I have learned that I am not a programmer or software person. My objective is to collaborate on a power converter and is not to struggle to learn github. I feel that I should not have to be a programmer in order to do what I envision. What are you recommending that I do? Is there anything about Github that makes it welcoming to a KiCad power converter project?
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Github is a general purpose website for collaborative work, just happens that KiCad used it and moved to Gitlab, a similar sort of site. Any project based around design files can be hosted there. Mostly itâs software since thatâs where source control tools originated. Here just to grab an example, is a project on hackaday:
and the Github repo for it, which contains both hardware and firmware files:
Youâll need to gain a critical mass of collaborators so that others can set up and maintain the repo if you donât wish to. Thatâs why I suggested you cast your net wider on sites like hackaday.
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Thanks.
I look at it this way: Do you think there are more KiCad users on Hackaday than on this forum? I want to do this in KiCad so anyone collaborating must be using KiCad.
OK thanks; I am looking and thinking about it. I thought about my initial post above for a few weeks before posting, and I am not so eager to get onto another forumâŚ
I think people on Hackaday wonât care that the project is developed on KiCad. Since KiCad is free to acquire, people will just go with it. From the designs Iâve seen there are quite a few expert users of KiCad there. A similar story for Freecad.
More to the point, I think there are more people there who might be interested in a power supply than here.
Suggestion: Forget about Github for the moment. When you get the boards, build one, test it, get it working, and take photos along the way, and post your story as a project. Hopefully youâll get comments asking you can share the design files. If you wish, you can simply attach the zip file to the project. If it gets really popular, then you can suggest someone start a Github repo for the files.
OK thanks again. Are you thinking more about Hackaday or KiCad user forum?
Hackaday ⌠⌠⌠⌠⌠⌠⌠âŚ
Hi Bob,
Iâm interested in this project. Interested in both KiCad and power supplies / converters (ac-dc and dc-dc).
I will not have time to spend in the project for the next three months. Anyway I have download the zippedd file and will read your article on next weekend.
Thanks for sharing your work.
Sounds good, Pedro. Within the next 1-2 months I hope to have a couple of boards working in different configurations. It would be sooner than that, but I will be receiving two different boards and the other one (to fight garden slugs) will probably need to get priority for building and testing. My wife is big on gardening and we get a lot of slugs here in the Pacific Northwest of USA.
There is an old figure of speech about âa slow boat from Chinaâ and that is almost literally the way the boards are shipping. I guess they really travel by air but with the cheapest shipping, nobody is in a hurry. 
Just to add on the licence part. Without a licence I canât do any work or changes to your circuit/design/PCB. As I have to assume you have not allowed me to do so.
Itâs not to enable you to profit, itâs to protect you and also myself if I was to amend as I would know it was permissible.
I am not a lawyer. I do not know what this is.
Neither am I, however without a declared Licence, even if itâs you can do what you want with it I donât care. I legally canât amend or change your files based on UK Law. (If I wanted to) I was quite interested in the project, but without a declared Licence I will stay away from it.
It can be as simple as a file called LICENCE which states âThis work has no Licence attached to itâ you just need to declare something.
Hi, nice that you share your work. Unfortunately, Iâm an absolute beginner in electronics. At the moment I am drawing individual projects that I find on YouTube to learn. It is also so that I have not yet found the right forum in which I can present my projects, in which I can also get help. Up until now it has always been the case that I have not received a reply to my e-mails or mail.
Regards
OKâŚDo I just need to post such a statement on this forum? Do I need to put it into a .pdf and post it with my signature? I thought we Americans were overly hung up on legal stuff, but perhaps the Brits are worse. Of course if someone asks me for a driverâs license, I can show mine. But my statement that I do not know what it isâŚthat is context related. Working in industry since 1975 I have never encountered a requirement quite like this.
I do have one patent with my name on it, but many managers prefer not to patent inventions because it gives away the information. To my understanding, that is how the German ME262 jet fighter was produced after the British invented the first jet engine. The British patented it. But my purpose here is to collaborate on this design. IMHO that information alone sounds like a license.
If I have not answered any of your posts it is because I have not noticed it or I have no helpful information to offer. Regarding this particular design I observe that (unfortunately) there are at least 1-2 fine pitch SMT ICs involved and you would need to be able to solder them satisfactorily. (I myself sometimes have difficulty to solder them correctly.) Some electronics experience would also be helpful. But I can offer a lot of debug help if you are willing to be patient and work with me and others. There is a good chance that you would need to have an oscilloscope.
I once loaded the ZIP. When assigning footprints, I got the following error message:
Fehler traten beim Laden der Footprints auf:
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Electromechanical_Switches.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Custom_Magnetics.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Connectors.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Mechanical.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Modules.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Passive.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Semiconductor_SMT.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Passive_Legacy.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Silkscreen_Graphics.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Net_Ties.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Bobs Kicad Modules/Bobs_Semiconductor_Thruhoal.pretty - Copyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:\Users\Lutz MĂźller\Documents\Kicad\Projekte\Labornetzteil/Digipot_SEPIC_footprince1.prettyâ not found.
Footprint library âC:/Bob Data/KiCad/Kicad Sourced Modules/Resistor_SMD.prettyâ not found.
I didnât mean the people in this forum.
I also have problems soldering. (shaking hands)
What version of KiCad are you running? This design is in 6.0. It is my understanding that the footprint information is embedded in the project folder. However if you are using 5.1X it will not be compatible. I have produced this in a laptop running Win10 and then opened my design with another computer running Linux. I do not believe that I copied my libraries over. But I can view the design OK. Can anyone help with this?