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Would You Be Interested in Roadtesting KiCad EDA?

rscasny

KiCad has a following on the element14 Community, so we figured it would be a good thing to roadtest. It's a little different than what we usually roadtest, so we have a few questions. KiCad is free, so we were wondering what the potential roadtesters would like to see in the roadtest kit. There was a suggestion for the roadtesters to design a Raspberry Pi HAT. But we could also use a Pi/Ardunio library or even someone's own design. 

I have some polls below. I'd appreciate you voting. Thanks.


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  • I have used KiCad since V5 and it's been relatively good. I mean - I didn't love EAGLE and I generally don't like vendor-lock-in. Being free and open source is a big positive.

    If it is to be RoadTested, I will echo the requests of others, but slightly differently - I'd like to see multiple board manufacturing runs being paid for as part of the deal. This is because (as we usually know) we don't always get the board right the first time. It might also be good to test different board designs (even if we do get it right) say the use of 2-layer, 4-layer or higher, and or materials (e.g. single-sided MCPCB). It would also be nice to understand how well it handles the manufacturing aspects - do users get their BOMs, CPLs right for the manufacturing house - so if assembly and parts are included, that would be even sweeter. Perhaps this last part can be a one-off batch of 5, but the others could be board-only for 2-layer, board-only for 4-layer, board-only for MCPCB (perhaps with a choice of colour and thickness, just in case someone wants to make a connectorless USB gadget).

    As a result, it would become more of a "project" RoadTest ... the costs may vary per participant due to shipping and duties as well, but I can't see the software being given a proper show without bringing it all the way from desk to finalised item(s).

    - Gough

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  • I have used KiCad since V5 and it's been relatively good. I mean - I didn't love EAGLE and I generally don't like vendor-lock-in. Being free and open source is a big positive.

    If it is to be RoadTested, I will echo the requests of others, but slightly differently - I'd like to see multiple board manufacturing runs being paid for as part of the deal. This is because (as we usually know) we don't always get the board right the first time. It might also be good to test different board designs (even if we do get it right) say the use of 2-layer, 4-layer or higher, and or materials (e.g. single-sided MCPCB). It would also be nice to understand how well it handles the manufacturing aspects - do users get their BOMs, CPLs right for the manufacturing house - so if assembly and parts are included, that would be even sweeter. Perhaps this last part can be a one-off batch of 5, but the others could be board-only for 2-layer, board-only for 4-layer, board-only for MCPCB (perhaps with a choice of colour and thickness, just in case someone wants to make a connectorless USB gadget).

    As a result, it would become more of a "project" RoadTest ... the costs may vary per participant due to shipping and duties as well, but I can't see the software being given a proper show without bringing it all the way from desk to finalised item(s).

    - Gough

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  • in reply to Gough Lui
    Gough Lui said:
    I'd like to see multiple board manufacturing runs being paid for as part of the deal

    That sounds more like a roadtest of the board manufacturers.

    Gough Lui said:
    As a result, it would become more of a "project" RoadTest

    I call that feature creep ;)

    When I proposed this idea, one of the comments back was "well this sounds like a design challenge" and it can easily explode to be one, and I had put it forward as being one (design a raspberry pi hat, since we have a raspberry pi design challenge each year) but there's concern over doing that in being able to 'pull in' the right people, and get the right people's attention to have the knowledge to enter that competition (I'll openly admit, that with our current facilities and methods we struggle to get reach for applicants for the really technical competitions and that makes the team uneasy).

    So this would focus more on the software side, with maybe fabrication depending on it, but we wouldn't want to put people off and feel they need to make a completed product. I don't believe testing software should have that as a requirement.