https://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/`.
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.

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 bom and gerbers then note that these are from the root of the repository. There is currently no way to change the path of the README (see issue #183).

E.g.

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

multi:
    project_one:
        bom: project_one/BOM.csv
        gerbers: manufacturing_outputs/project_one_gerbers
    project_two:
      ...

Development

Architecture

Current

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

Planned

We are using GitLab as an authentication and Git hosting service. We modify and proxy it to get the functionality we need. The graphs get too complicated if we try to add all the possible data-flows but here is the rough data-flow for submission of a project.

Services used are:

• nginx-config to configure Nginx to serve the frontend and all services.
• partinfo for getting part information for BOMs.
• gitlab-config configuring GitLab to be used for authentication and Git hosting.
• gitlab-proxy for requests that need to access GitLab API but need any kind of added functionality like unauthenticated access or modifying projects (which needs additional hooks to trigger processing).

Roadmap

• GitLab and Accounts
  • Modify GitLab and integrate with login in Kitspace frontend
  • Build frontend for basic account settings
  • Make GitLab source of user projects
• Upload submissions and editing
  • Allow for file upload to GitLab
  • Gerber plotter processing for KiCAD and Eagle
  • BOM extraction processing
  • BOM Builder
    • Get retailer info out of partinfo

Requirements

• Nodejs version 6 (v6.17.1)
• fswatch on OSX/Windows or inotify-tools on Linux
• Ninja Build >= 1.5.1
• Yarn to ensure the correct dependencies are installed
• The rest of the dependencies can be retrieved via yarn install

Running a local dev server

• Get requirements above and make sure executables are on your path
• yarn install
• yarn start (or npm start)
• Point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:8080. The script should watch for file-saves and re-build when you change a source file.

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.

Backers

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

Sponsors

Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Become a sponsor]