Create Hardware with Open-Source ecosystem
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Let’s talk about Hardware!
Electronics Hardware design is an expensive proposition. In addition to material and development costs, there are design tools that are required to make products. Industry uses proprietary tools for variety of reasons.
- Reliability over the years
- Complex design capabilities
- Talent accessibility for these tools
- Re-use of design across vendors
But such tools can cost ~20k USD for basic versions.
I am part of a team that specializes in designing complex electronics devices such as mobiles phones and tablets. One year ago, we started initiative to explore KiCad, an open-source tool for electronics design.
We will walk you through our experience of using KiCad in corporate setting.
- Hardware design flow in an organization.
- Internal resistance against switching to open-source tools.
- Benefits we were able to demonstrate.
- Domino effect in adopting KiCad
- KiCad vs proprietary tools.
From my learnings with KiCad, I have come to believe that if India wants to move from being a service industry to making products, then we will have to integrate hardware FOSS tools into our processes.
KiCad is gateway to connect and learn from Global maker community. We will also discuss on how open-source ecosystem will help you in manufacturing your design, Maker's way !
This should be interesting to hear. Most graduating engineers still seem to have learnt Eagle and when they join they ask if they can continue using Eagle. If companies start adopting and pushing for adoption of KiCad, hopefully over the years, even education departments start adopting it. KiCad is today good enough for most of the embedded projects done today. We've just started using KiCad at our company as well, though our designs aren't as complicated as you would think.
