Comment by lnsru

6 years ago

This great Dev Kit design is available for everybody: https://kicad-pcb.org/made-with-kicad/librem_5_dev_kit/ Amazing piece of open source hardware. While I am not interested in cellphones, I might use for robotics project.

13 comments

lnsru

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m712  6 years ago

Here I must praise KiCad. It is one of the best pieces of FOSS software out there. It beats almost all other (commercial or non-commercial) software in PCB design, hands down.

  • dbcurtis  6 years ago

    > It beats almost all other (commercial or non-commercial) software in PCB design, hands down.

    You need to get out more often. Look, I am a KiCAD supporter, too. But KiCAD is repeating the mistakes of commercial ECAD systems of the 1980’s. Am I glad it exists? Surely. But set your sights higher. KiCAD has much room for improvement.

  • ATsch  6 years ago

    It's sure the best thing for hobby users today. It firmly beats probably all of the sub $1000 "pro-sumer" or "maker" tools like eagle.

    But as much as I like it, it's still years if not decades away from catching up to the big industry tools like Altium, Cadence, Mentor. They have $$$$$/seat pricing, but if you need them, you need them.

  • madengr  6 years ago

    If that were case, it would be used everywhere. There is a reason I shell out several $k for Altium.

    • aswanson  6 years ago

      Your application domain is probably targeting a market of 10 customers you can obscenely overcharge, like a mainframe manufacturer circa 1976. There is nothing special about The area you work in that renders it immune to economic forces, if it's worth anything to society as a whole. The directional vector of technology encompassing a wider consumer market heads towards lower cost and openness, inevitably.

  • Avamander  6 years ago

    Same, compared to some other free alternatives (for example CircuitMaker) it's a complete blessing. I think I haven't seen a worse piece of software then CircuitMaker.

  • imtringued  6 years ago

    From what I have heard KiCad has significantly worse parts/footprint management than proprietary EDAs like Altium combined with Altium Vault.

harimau777  6 years ago

Would that allow a hobbyist to make their own version of the phone? If so, I could see that being a fun project.