Reading a circuit page

The header

• The faceplate on the left is drawn from the circuit's enclosure and controls, with the knobs named. The caption gives the box and the knob count.
• Vendor and SKU above the name; the vendor links to all of that vendor's circuits.
• Based on names the original, which links to every circuit based on it, and counts the other boards that clone it. Where the designer of the original also sells a board, that board is linked here.
• Category, Controls, Difficulty, Build. A control name links to every circuit with a control like it.
• Price in your chosen currency, with the vendor's own price beside it when it was converted, and the stock: in stock, out of stock or no longer listed.
• Also as: a stripboard or other layout the same source publishes for the circuit.

A layout (vero, tagboard and the rest) shows the board size, the number of track cuts and wire links, and whether the layout's source marks it Verified, meaning someone has built it and it works. An unverified layout may still have a mistake in it.

A board the vendor has stopped listing stays in the library with a No longer listed note and the last date it was seen. Its links may no longer work.

The buttons

The first button is where you get the circuit, and its label says what you will find there:

• Buy the PCB at … for a shop,
• Get the gerbers at … for a free board in a code repository, which you order from a board maker,
• Order the board at … for a project shared on a board maker's site,
• Open the layout at …, Read the post at … or Open the schematic at … for free layouts, blogs and archives,
• See the kit at … for a complete kit.

Build document opens the vendor's PDF, with its version where the vendor gives one. Other files the source shares, such as drill templates, gerbers or a KiCad project, get a button each. + My bench keeps the circuit, and once it is on your bench a note field opens under the buttons. Some sources carry a Heads up line, a caution about that vendor's documents worth reading before you order.

A few designers sell boards by message rather than through a shop. Their circuits say so under the title, with a link to message them.

The schematic

Schematics belong to the people who drew them, so Akashic links to them rather than copying them. The Schematic section says where this circuit's is: the build document and the page it is on, the blog post, the archive file or the designer's KiCad project. Where a schematic has been redrawn in KiCad for Akashic, or the designer shares theirs under an open license, it is shown, and a redrawn one can be downloaded as a .kicad_sch fragment to drop into your own project.

The parts list

The list is grouped by kind of part, with five columns:

Ref

The designator on the board. Sources that list parts without designators show a count instead, such as ×2.

Value

As the source wrote it.

Normalized

The same value written one way. A part named by number (an IC, a transistor, a diode, a pot) links to its page and every other circuit that uses it.

Type

The source's description: film capacitor, DIP-8, log pot.

Notes

The source's notes, such as a substitute it suggests or a socket it recommends.

How far to trust a value

Most parts lists are read from the text of the build document or from a KiCad interactive BOM, and are exact. Some documents only have a picture of the table or the schematic, and those values are read by machine and marked:

ocr

read from an image of the parts list

sch

paired from the labels on the schematic drawing

fixed

corrected by hand, where the source had a typo or the machine read it wrong

Check any marked value against the build document before you order. A box headed Check before you build lists the values the reader was not sure of, as on Bent Fishbowl's Clearglass. Where a blog post corrects its own schematic, the corrections are applied to the list and listed above it as Fixes to the schematic.

A layout often names only its active parts and pots in the legend, with the resistor and capacitor values printed on the drawing; its page says so when that is all the list has. If a circuit has no parts list at all, the page says why and where to find one.

Variants

When a build document gives values for several versions of the circuit, a Variant row of buttons switches the list between them. The Muffin Fuzz has eight, one for each Big Muff it can build. Searches and part counts use the first variant.

Copy it, or report it

• Copy as TSV copies the list shown, variant included, as tab-separated text that pastes straight into a spreadsheet or a parts order.
• Report a wrong parse opens a GitHub issue with the circuit's name and address filled in. Say which row is wrong and what the build document says; the fix stays through every weekly refresh.

Other boards of the same pedal

At the bottom, every other board, layout and schematic based on the same original, with its vendor, box and price, so you can compare enclosures, prices and parts without searching again.