KiCad provides a handy Plugin and Content Manager to find and install plugins and other extensions. However, beside the official KiCad repository, which is regulated, it is nearly impossible to provide a self-hosted repository.
This application provides an easy to set up service to serve the KiCad PCM.
KiCad Pcbnew files contain all required footprints etc., unlike the schematic files you need no libraries or such.
Creating Gerber files is sometimes hard as different fabs require different Gerber files. Starting with the file extension ending with floating point precision.
One argument against uploading KiCad files is copyright as the fab could reverse engineer the PCB. But this does not count for open source projects and is really unlikely to happen.
Shameless plug: We just launched an affordable PCB prototyping service in Europe with native KiCad support. The PCBs are manufactured in Germany with a manufacturer usually working for the automotive and medical industry. See https://go.aisler.net for details.
As I noticed some interest here, I'd like you to test the PCB service. Use coupon code 'hn102016' on checkout to get a 15% discount on your order.
Would be happy to get some feedback on the PCB quality!
On the page is a pricing calculator, just scroll down a bit.
As I said we're trying to get a low price on low quantities, if you only need 3 PCBs (e.g. for prototyping) we're cheaper than DirtyPCBs.
Yeah, we met back in 2015 I guess! Will you be there in 2017? Would you be interested in some exchange over 1clickbom?
We noticed that a platform for OSHW without making the actual hardware available is kinda useless. That's why we started to thinking about, how do we make these projects available cheaply?
Shameless plug here, we're just working on getting a PCB & assembly service like Seeedstudio to Europe.
What we're trying to achieve is to get close to prices from China but with zero quantities. That means you don't have to take care of stock, as soon as you need one we manufacture it.
Beside that all manufacturing is done in Germany and we take care of logistics.
My 9-5 job got a bit boring after 5 years so I decided to work on an idea I already had in mind for a few years. With the help of my co-founder (which I met in the meantime) the business got serious and I noticed that I'm way to busy with the 9-5 job. So I got the opportunity to work 24h/week at a local startup which also shares our technology stack. I usually split the week in 3 days on the paid job and 3 days (w/ one day of every weekend) for our own startup.
Now we're one year later, still having 2 jobs as the income is not sufficient enough to pay for life.
My startup tried to solve exactly this problem in the Electronic Design Automation domain. We provided VCS and compare functionality focused on the needs of this industry.
We pivoted. The main issue we faced is the way the electrical engineers work and how difficulty it is to change this. It was incredible hard the explain these people how to properly use a VCS. We focused on a simple interface and tried to optimize on the way electrical engineers work. No chance!