What do you do with old STM32 development boards after prototyping?

[emilyrose]

Hi everyone,

I’m curious how other developers handle STM32 development boards and electronic prototypes once a project moves on to a newer revision.

During development it seems pretty easy to accumulate NUCLEO boards, evaluation boards, USB programmers, old sensors, cables and prototype PCBs that are no longer needed. Some of them still work, while others have damaged connectors, outdated firmware, or components that make them useful mainly for parts.

For boards that are still functional, I usually think it makes sense to keep a small collection for testing or reuse them in another project. But I’m less sure about what the best approach is for boards that are genuinely obsolete or damaged.

Do you normally:

• Keep old development boards for future debugging?
• Reuse components from them in prototypes?
• Pass working boards on to other developers or students?
• Or send non-working electronics to an electronics recycling service?

I’m particularly interested in what people do with larger collections of old development hardware rather than a single board.

I recently started looking more closely at the last option because electronics contain materials that shouldn’t simply end up in regular household waste. For example, when hardware is beyond practical reuse, using a proper electronics recycling service seems like a more responsible way to handle it.

For anyone who has worked on several embedded projects, how do you normally decide whether an old board is worth keeping, salvaging for parts, donating, or recycling?

I’d be interested to hear what workflow other STM32 developers use.

[Karl Yamashita]

Bad boards go to electronic recycling.

Keep good boards for future use.

For engineers that never worked with STM32, give them some boards to learn with.

 

[emilyrose]

That makes sense. I especially like the idea of passing working boards on to engineers who are new to STM32 rather than letting them sit unused.

 

I think that gives the hardware a much longer useful life. A board that is no longer needed for one project can still be valuable for learning, testing, or experimenting with a different application.

 

For boards that are damaged or genuinely beyond reuse, I agree that electronic recycling is the better route. It also seems like a good way to avoid building up a large box of hardware that nobody is actually going to use again.

 

I’m curious how you handle the borderline cases, though — for example, boards that still work but have an older MCU, damaged connectors, or are no longer supported by the current software tools. Do you normally keep those for parts, give them away, or send them for recycling?

[Karl Yamashita]

If it’s an EOL MCU or broken connector, then I’d just recycle it. If you have hardware that software like STM32CubeIDE doesn’t support anymore, then it probably belongs in a museum. 😂 

[emilyrose]

That’s a good way to look at it. I hadn’t really thought about the museum/legacy angle, but I can see the value in keeping a few unusual boards around, especially when they represent an older MCU or development workflow.

I also agree that there’s a point where keeping hardware just becomes clutter. If the board has an EOL MCU, a damaged connector, or is no longer useful for development, recycling it seems more sensible than letting it sit in storage indefinitely.

I think the tricky cases are the boards that still work but are no longer supported by the current tools. Those are probably the ones where labeling and keeping a small reference collection makes the most sense.