KiCon Europe 2024
Introduction session
Lukas "minute" Hartmann, CEO, MNT Research GmbH discusses development of Open Hardware, specifically the MNT Reform Open Hardware laptop
Unlock unused potential of KiCad by learning how to create custom plugins that enhance functionality and streamline your PCB design workflow. This session will guide attendees through the process of building plugins using Python and the KiCad Scripting Interface, covering essential concepts from setup to deployment and uploading into the Plugin and Content Manager for others to use. Whether you're looking to automate repetitive tasks, integrate third-party tools, or introduce new features, this talk will equip you with the basic knowledge and tools to start developing powerful plugins that can significantly improve your design experience.
A detailed talk about how to file a high quality bug report that minimizes the amount of work users and developers need to do to get bugs resolved as quickly as possible.
As introduction I will talk about ngspice simulator, and its integration into KiCad/Eeschema. Next will be a discussion on what is required for simulation: symbols, circuits, ngspice device models. A simple circuit simulation will be set up and run live. More simulation examples will follow to demonstrate the broad variety of circuits and simulation types.
Capturing schematics is a very important step in the development of new electronic boards, as it simplifies the process of PCB layout and documents the functionality of a circuit in a readable form. In this talk, we want to present our efforts in applying machine learning to quickly convert schematic images, broadly available on PDF documents such as application notes and reference designs, to native KiCAD format, thus reducing the time investment needed to reuse circuits in a project. Finally, we propose the integration of this functionality as a KiCAD plugin to be developed together with the community.
This Talk will show you how to integrate easily UV printings on Kicad.
In this talk, I'll share my experiences in collaborations between visual artists and PCB layout engineers, and show some of the methods for tricking KiCad into producing beautiful things.
Board complexity requires planning to execute a successful project. In this talk, I will discuss the successes and potential pitfalls when starting your next board.
Moderated roundtable discussion with the KiCad developers on the state of the project, future directions and opportunities
The current state of the KiCad project.
Hand assembly can be a time consuming task but there ways to speed it up. This workshop will show you how.
Developing new electronic circuits often requires a complete redesign, which is resource-intensive and time-consuming. While there are open-source platforms sharing entire circuits, there is little focus on sharing smaller, reusable sections of circuits. This talk introduces the concept of Edgies—minimal functional basic blocks of circuits—that can be shared, reused, and tested more efficiently, revolutionizing circuit design in a way that mirrors modern software development practices.
We are the library team. You can also be the library team! It's easy, low-pressure, and occasionally fun! We'll show you how.
KiCad's libraries are created and maintained by an enormous volunteer effort. As more and more users use KiCad, the libraries grow and evolve with many. many user contributions.
The library team sits between the many incoming contributions and the libraries we ship to users. We try to keep everything correct, consistent, and useful.
For those tasks we can always use more help. There are plenty of contributions that need reviewing and tools we would like to improve. While it is helpful if you are experienced in electronics or software and know how to use git, those are not mandatory skills.
In this workshop session, we will give you everything you need to get started as a librarian.
This talk will enable you to quickly and efficiently create PCB assembly variants and switch between them conveniently and safely with KiVar.
You will learn about the concepts of KiVar, how it is different from existing tools and how it can help you manage variants in your KiCad projects with ease.
All variant management features are presented and illustrated using simple examples.
The KiVar project: https://kivar.markh.de
Introduction to clearance and creepage, and the ongoing development for a creepage DRC check.
The development of mobile networks made it possible to move to the next level of data transfer speeds. The potential of radio waves as an energy source is still waiting to be exploited. Recent developments in high-frequency electronics temptates to come back to Nikola Tesla’s idea of wireless energy transfer.
Research in this area is difficult as it requires operating in centimeter wavelenghts, however, some progress in this matter is noticeable. Simulation comes with enormous help in designing of harvesters circuits, especially with shortening time in receiving results of experiments, which leads to lowering costs and speeding up the design process. There were some simulation environments levereged in the research: Simscape Electrical, LT Spice and last but not least KiCad.
During this talk a way to simulate RFEHs in KiCad will be presented, parameters defining circuits performance will be discussed and results to other SPICE simulators will be compared.
Kicad gets steadily more popular for commercial projects. A big step for bringing your newly desigend product to market is certification. The european CE certification process can be very daunting and people get easily confused by the multitude of regulations and directives. The mandatory documentation including product assessment, Risk analysis and technical documentation is often overlooked in the public discussion as only the manufacturer and authorities will get to see them usually.
Developing Open source products has advantages for the required documentation and Kicad in particular can be easily utilized for fast and compliant results, once you figured out the workflow.
Discussion with European manufacturers on the challenges and promises of European circuit manufacture
We'll look at PCBs and driving KiCad from a visual design perspective, and understand how to prepare graphics for KiCad to use, and how to work with them. We will then make some pretty layouts. I'll bring cat pictures. You can bring other cute things.
KiTorquer is a KiCAD plugin to generate optimized magnetic coil layouts for attitude control of small satellites
The KiCon electronic badge is an Open Source device integrating a number of technologies and derived from reference circuits and several teams' work since 2022. The electronic circuits of this device were designed exclusively using KiCad, and during this hour we study the technology in depth.
Tell us what you dislike about KiCad (succinctly). We'll summarize it live, write it down, and hopefully fix it. Let it all out!
Wrap up for KiCon Europe 2024