Devlog 6

Since the last devlog I’ve been working through my list of 60 ideas.

Part pages got a lot more useful. Each one now has a price history chart, a hint about when a sold-out part might come back, and whether the part is still being made or is on its way out. Sometimes it also suggests a part with better specs for the same money, and now it can show up to three cheaper swaps instead of just one. Search results also get small badges when a price or stock level changes.

I added a currency picker, a watchlist for parts you care about, and RSS feeds that tell you when a part’s price or stock moves. For BOMs, you can now see whether buying everything from one store beats splitting the order between stores.

I also made tools for people who don’t want to use the website. There’s a developer page for the API, a command line tool that prices a BOM, a GitHub Action that posts your BOM cost on pull requests, and a KiCad plugin. I tested the plugin on real KiCad boards and found it was missing some part number fields, so I fixed that.

Other fixes: the BOM page works better on phones, the colors are easier to read, dark mode looks right, and downloaded BOMs can’t carry sneaky spreadsheet formulas anymore.

The free data source I use still has broken search, so I’ve started applying for the official LCSC API.

Fingers crossed it gets approved!