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.
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.
> 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.
Would you mind expanding on these mistakes?
3 replies →
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.
If that were case, it would be used everywhere. There is a reason I shell out several $k for Altium.
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.
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.
From what I have heard KiCad has significantly worse parts/footprint management than proprietary EDAs like Altium combined with Altium Vault.
How many layers does the mainboard have?
Would that allow a hobbyist to make their own version of the phone? If so, I could see that being a fun project.