Watch a 5 minute lightning-talk about Kitspace from the 35th Chaos Communication Congress (35C3).

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 what allow a design to be manufactured:

• A preview of the printed circuit board and prominent link to download the Gerber manufacturing files
• The ability to quickly add the required components to a distributor shopping cart (using our browser extension)

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

• Subscribe to the Kitspace newsletter
• Follow Kitspace on Twitter
• Join our chatroom: choose your preferred platform, they are bridged so we can all talk across platforms
  • Discord
  • Matrix.org
  • IRC: irc.libera.chat#kitspace (e.g. via Kiwi IRC)

Our visitor stats are public on plausible.io.

The renderings of the PCB files are made using Tracespace tools. You can get similar renderings and also inspect invdividual layers, using the Tracespace Gerber viewer.

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

summary: A description for your project

site: https://example.com # A site you would like to link to (include http:// or https://)

color: purple # for example
   # The solder resist color of the preview rendering. If left undefined "green" is used. Can be one of:
       # - green
       # - red
       # - blue
       # - black
       # - white
       # - orange
       # - purple
       # - yellow

bom: my-bom.xlsx
  # A path to your 1-click-bom in case it isn't `1-click-bom.tsv`. Supported extensions are:
  # - .tsv
  # - .csv
  # - .ods
  # - .xlsx
  # Check out https://github.com/kitspace/1clickBOM#readme for more details


gerbers: my/gerber/folder # A path to your folder of gerbers in case it isn't `gerbers/`.

eda:
  type: kicad # or eagle
  pcb: path/to/your/file.kicad_pcb # your/eagle.brd

readme: my/special/readme.md # 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. See below for details.

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.

If you you used KiCad for your design 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

If your project has a KiCad PCB file, and interactive assembly guide for the board will be created using the Interactive HTML BOM plugin from the Open Scope Project.

If both eda and gerbers are present the Gerber files will be used.

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

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:
      ...

1. We (Kitspace developers) do not claim any ownership over your work, it remains yours.
2. By submitting your project you give us permission to host copies of your files for other people to download.
3. 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.

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

• 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

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

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.

We are committed to making working on Kitspace an inclusive and welcoming environment. All contributors are expected to abide by our code of conduct. It's just common sense.

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.

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

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