What Happens to Your Projects After You Finish Them?

My projects are my customer's projects - prototypes are delivered to them and often eventually make it to production or (if test or research equipment) are used as is.

I like to keep a sample here for reference if support is needed but that isn't always possible.

I keep documentation for ever and any left over parts until they get used on another job or I get fed up with the space they take up and move them to general parts store. I have a lot of odd remainders that may never get used, like 3 x 1000V 250A relays or a 250A current sensor. I don't bin them because it isn't unknown for a customer to ask for support 10 years after the initial delivery -  and it's always good to be able to help.

MK

Hey MK,

One question, where you store your documentation? My question is because I'm highly interested in documentation management. I have a copy in an external HD and google driver. Tell me your experience if possible.

best,

João Paulo Bino

I don't do much in the way of formal documentation control at home. My project "database" is just a hard drive directory structure. Although I print documents I need for assembly, they are uncontrolled and not kept in any formal filing system. My CAD system maintains all the old revisions. The hard drive is occasionally backed up onto an external hard drive, actually several hard drives and sometimes I put an important subdirectory on a memory stick.

I don't do much in the way of formal documentation control at home. My project "database" is just a hard drive directory structure. Although I print documents I need for assembly, they are uncontrolled and not kept in any formal filing system. My CAD system maintains all the old revisions. The hard drive is occasionally backed up onto an external hard drive, actually several hard drives and sometimes I put an important subdirectory on a memory stick.

Thanks for sharing,

Sometimes I think I'm obsessed with wiping digital contents, I mean I spend to much time trying to find the best way. People I know who work with hardware design do the way you do, different from the way software people do.

We ( from hardware )  keep the archives with us, conversely, they(from software) only know repo and servers.

Btw, I have tried to find a way to succeed with "source code management for hardware", but it seems like there is nothing really good up to now because there is no decent diff tool afaik. I'm failing miserably. The best I could find for diff tool was print pdf and then use a tool to compare them.

I've been doing this way, please check this repo

p.s.: I'm sorry if I'm way out of the subject

I explored your link and it seems very good. I do mostly the same, privately on my AWS server when (rarely) I am doing something that is not open source.

In the other cases, I will use GitHub creating repositories that I will maintain and when I have time I make better with images and other references in the readme. Recently I started using GitHub pages that make good small and simple sites beside the repository itself.

The projects I make frequently are the base for some other projects or the reference for some new things I have in mind. If the stuff I build, hardware and software are too big I just disassemble them and keep apart but should be available for any future use. What I try to do as much as possible is making the stuff with the core boards (Arduino, PSoC, Raspberry etc.) easy to remove and reuse in other projects. So, if I need to revive an old project for some reason I just reflash the board.

Thanks, Enrico, your answer gave me some hints...

I've already played around with some boards and wrote some code playing around but I didn't put under version control ... and now I have been asked for some references for a job application, I believe they would be good resources cause there would be no problem to show them... then, I'm ok with the law. I'm organizing some code I found to "push" them

I am doing something that is not open source.

Would you mind to share, if possible?