The presentation will give a brief overview of the projects history & lessons learned during the course of developing a high tech camera device as community project. We also want to demo and explain the produced hardware, enclosures and sample footage then look at the challenges still ahead. Last 5 minutes reserved for Q&A
FOSDEM 2020 is a free event on Februrary 1st and 2nd for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels:
The Friday before FOSDEM, January 31st, will be an event for those that want to learn about KiCad development from project leaders like Wayne Stambaugh and Seth Hillbrand:
Are you looking to write code that improves KiCad?
On Friday, Jan 31 (the day before FOSDEM), we’ll be hosting a Learn to Code KiCad session in Brussels, BE. I will be there as will Wayne and possibly a few other of the lead development team. We’ll help you understand how the various KiCad components fit together and work with you to get your favorite feature from idea to committed code.
What you need:
1) An identified bug report (or multiple) that you’d like to address. This can be either a legitimate bug or a wishlist feature that is triaged in our system.
2) A laptop with your development environment
3) A launchpad account
4) A compiling version of KiCad
5) A working knowledge of C++ coding
What we’ll provide:
1) Space, power outlet, wifi
2) Coffee
3) A short introduction to the structure of KiCad and how the parts work together
4) Up to 8 hours of development time with others who share your interests
5) Clarifying insights to your KiCad coding questions
At the end of the day, you should be able to get at least 1 and possibly multiple bug report fixes under your belt and into the code base!
If you’re coming to FOSDEM 2020 and would like to participate, please e-mail me directly (off-list to preserve people’s inboxes). Send me your name/contact info and the list of 1 or more launchpad bugs you’d like to work on during the day. I’ll add you to our shared sheet (to deconflict bugs people are addressing) and get you all of the relevant information for the meeting
Although recent versions of KiCad have made improvements to the way part and footprint libraries are handled, the big upcoming change is that footprint libraries will be installed locally. The Github plugin for library management — a good idea in theory — is no longer the default. Spice simulation is also coming to KiCad. The best demo of the upcoming Spice integration is this relatively old video demonstrating how KiCad turns a schematic into graphs of voltage and current.
The biggest news, however, is the new ability to import Eagle projects. [Wayne] demoed this live on stage, importing an Eagle board and schematic of an Arduino Mega and turning it into a KiCad board and schematic in a matter of seconds. It’s not quite perfect yet, but it’s close and very, very good.
There are, of course, other fancy features that make designing schematics and PCBs easier. Eeschema is getting a better configuration dialog, improved bus and wire dragging, and improved junction handling. Pcbnew is getting rounded rectangle and complex pad shape support, direct export to STEP files, and you’ll soon be able to update the board from the schematic without updating the netlist file. Read that last feature again, slowly. It’s the best news we’ve ever heard.
The 4.0.5 stable version contains critical bug fixes and version string improvements since the last release. The stable release version 4.0.5 is made from the stable 4.0 branch with bug fixes cherry picked from the development branch of KiCad.
KiCad binaries for Windows, OS X, and several GNU/Linux distributions can be found on the download page:
Wondering who is involved in the development of KiCad? Project leader Wayne Stambaugh presented at FOSDEM last year about the past, present, and future of the KiCad project:
Wayne also presented at FOSDEM 2016 back in March, but the audio and video quality is worse than the 2015 video.
OSH Park 