kitspace.org

Watch a 5 minute lightning talk about Kitspace from the 35c3 congress.

Kitspace (formerly Kitnic) is a registry of open source hardware electronics projects that are ready to order and build. It could be described as a "Thingiverse for electronics". The most important elements of a Kit Space project page are:

A prominent link to download the Gerber files and a preview rendering of the board
The ability to quickly add the required components to a retailer shopping cart (using our browser extension)

Help us build an open hardware repository of useful electronics projects!

pcb-stackup

The renderings of the PCB files are made using pcb-stackup. You can get similar renderings and also inspect invdividual layers, using the tracespace gerber viewer.

Get in touch

Join Riot.im chat or IRC freenode#kitspace
Post on our Google Groups mailing list

Submitting your project

Check out kitspace.org/submit which will guide you through the process.

kitspace.yaml format

Currently the kitspace.yaml makes use of the following fields:

summary: A description for your project
site: A site you would like to link to (include http:// or https://)
color: The solder resist color of the preview rendering. Can be one of:
       - green
       - red
       - blue
       - black
       - white
       - orange
       - purple
       - yellow
bom: A path to your 1-click-bom in case it isn't `1-click-bom.tsv`.
gerbers: A path to your folder of gerbers in case it isn't `gerbers/`.
eda:
  type: kicad
  pcb: path/to/your/file.kicad_pcb
readme: A path to your README file in case it isn't in the repository root directory.
multi: Identifier field only used if the repository contains multiple projects.

Paths should be in UNIX style (i.e. use / not \) and relative to the root of your repository. The YAML format is pretty straight forward but if you need to know more check the example below and the YAML website. Use this YAML validator to be extra sure that your kitspace.yaml is valid.

KiCad PCB

Instead of using Gerber files you can also specify a KiCad PCB file to use by adding an eda field.

eda:
  type: kicad
  pcb: path/to/your/file.kicad_pcb

Some examples

Check out the repo links of the projects listed on kitspace.org already. The minimum required file tree is something like :

.
├── 1-click-bom.tsv
└── gerbers
    ├── example.cmp
    ├── example.drd
    ├── example.dri
    ├── example.gko
    ├── example.gpi
    ├── example.gto
    ├── example.plc
    ├── example.sol
    ├── example.stc
    └── example.sts

A more advanced example could be something like:

.
├── kitspace.yaml
└── manufacture
    ├── advanced-example-BOM.tsv
    └── gerbers-and-drills
        ├── advanced-example-B_Adhes.gba
        ├── advanced-example-B_CrtYd.gbr
        ├── advanced-example-B_Cu.gbl
        ├── advanced-example-B_Fab.gbr
        ├── advanced-example-B_Mask.gbs
        ├── advanced-example-B_Paste.gbp
        ├── advanced-example-B_SilkS.gbo
        ├── advanced-example.drl
        ├── advanced-example-Edge_Cuts.gbr
        ├── advanced-example-F_Adhes.gta
        ├── advanced-example-F_CrtYd.gbr
        ├── advanced-example-F_Cu.gtl
        ├── advanced-example-F_Fab.gbr
        ├── advanced-example-F_Mask.gts
        ├── advanced-example-F_Paste.gtp
        └── advanced-example-F_SilkS.gto

with kitspace.yaml containing:

summary: A more advanced example
site: https://example.com
color: red
bom: manufacture/advanced-example-BOM.tsv
gerbers: manufacture/gerbers-and-drills

The multi field

NOTE: multi doesn't yet work with the kitspace.org/submit preview tool. See issue #182.

Kitspace supports multiple projects in one repository with the multi field. When multiple projects exist, multi will always be the first field in the kitspace.yaml, with the paths to your projects folder nested underneath.

├── kitspace.yaml
├── project_one
│   ├── 1-click-bom.tsv
│   ├── README.md
│   └── gerbers
│       ├── example.cmp
│       ├── example.drd
│       ├── example.dri
│        ...
│       ├── example.stc
│       └── example.sts
└── project_two
    ├── 1-click-bom.tsv
    ├── README.md
    └── gerbers
        ├── example.cmp
        ├── example.drd
        ├── example.dri
         ...
        ├── example.stc
        └── example.sts

with kitspace.yaml containing:

multi:
    project_one:
        summary: First project in a repository.
        color: blue
        site: https://example-one.com
    project_two:
        summary: Second project in a repository.
        color: red
        site: https://example-two.com

If you want to use custom paths for the readme, bom, or gerbers then note that these are from the root of the repository.

E.g.

├── kitspace.yaml
├── manufacturing_outputs
│   └── project_one_gerbers
│       ├── example.cmp
│       ├── example.drd
│       ├── example.dri
│        ...
│       ├── example.stc
│       └── example.sts
├── project_one
│   ├── documentation
│   │   └── README.md
    └── BOM.csv
└── project_two
    ...

multi:
    project_one:
        readme: project_one/documentation/README.md
        bom: project_one/BOM.csv
        gerbers: manufacturing_outputs/project_one_gerbers
    project_two:
      ...

Terms and Conditions for Adding a Project

We (Kitspace developers) do not claim any ownership over your work, it remains yours.
By submitting your project you give us permission to host copies of your files for other people to download.
If you change your mind, you can remove your project any time by removing the public git repository, sending a pull-request to remove it from boards.txt or notifying @kasbah in some other way.

Development

Architecture

This repository is the Kitspace front-end. The contents including all project data are currently pre-compiled into a static site. The main part of the site that requires server side components is the submission preview (/submit). Pages also use freegeoip lookup to decide what sites to link to for people that do not have the 1-click BOM browser extension. This roughly illustrates the main data flow when someone is browsing the site.

We have two services running for the submission preview.

git-clone-server for serving up files from git repositories.
partinfo for getting part information for the BOM.

And one for the geo ip lookup on pages.

freegeoip

Requirements

Nodejs version 10 or higher
fswatch on OSX/Windows or inotify-tools on Linux
Ninja Build >= 1.5.1
Inkscape (v0.92) for converting SVGs to PNGs
Yarn to ensure the correct dependencies are installed
The rest of the dependencies can be retrieved via yarn install

Quick start for Debian/Ubuntu

curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install git nodejs inotify-tools ninja-build inkscape yarn
git clone https://github.com/kitspace/kitspace && cd kitspace
yarn install

Running a local dev server

Get requirements above then:

yarn install    # retrieves dependencies
yarn get-boards # gets the test projects and puts them into boards/
yarn build      # generates a build.ninja file using the ./configure script
# and calls ninja to execute the build.ninja file which builds everything (similar to how make executes a makefile)
yarn serve      # starts a development server to preview the site

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser to see your local development site.

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.

Backers

Thank you to all our backers! 🙏 [Become a backer]

John-K / kitspace