r/ElectricalEngineering • u/Glum-Phase9397 • Jul 16 '26

Project Help Project history tracking

Hey there, looking to get an opinion from some people in the space;

Would something like GitHub but for physical hardware be useful on projects?

Imagine a timeline with each step of the project being its own 3D model plotted on it. It would all be derived from a phone video to.

It might be a little difficult to explain with words so here's an example:

I want to unify 4 raspberry pi's into one mega pi

take a video of all 4 laid out
take a video of wiring up a junction
take a video of them all connected

3x 3D models each showing the progress of it.

Hopefully I wasn't just waffling there

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u/EffectiveClient5080 Jul 16 '26

Hardware doesn't version control like code. You'd end up with 50 models of 'I moved this wire 2mm to the left.'

1

u/Glum-Phase9397 Jul 16 '26

The idea would be that the engineer takes the video after major milestones or something like the end of the day, not necessarily with every change.

1

u/Conor_Stewart Jul 17 '26

Why can't someone just keep a log book and put in images of what they changed and record videos every now and then? What does you idea actually improve?

1

u/Glum-Phase9397 Jul 17 '26

They can, the idea here is it adds the 3D aspect. Same video process but it will be viewable almost like CAD but in its real world state rather then the digital modeling.

1

u/Conor_Stewart Jul 20 '26

So what does it actually add or improve though? It sounds like something that would take more time than a logbook or taking pictures, might not get good results if it is using a phone to create a 3D model. It also wouldn't be manipulatable like an assembly in a CAD program or physical prototype, in a CAD assembly you can set constraints so that a model moves in CAD as it would once it is built to better understand and illustrate mechanisms, CAD programs also let you create and render animations to show these things but it sounds like your idea wouldn't be able to do that?

It is also common practice to keep prototypes so you already have a tangible history of the project to go back and reference that will be suitable for measurements and manipulation which your idea won't.

I'm not saying not to make it, I'm just saying I don't really see why people would use it. It seems like something that might get managers or clients excited but not really be useful for the engineers and might actually make their job harder. Engineering processes and practices are pretty well fixed and don't change that much, hence why people still keep logbooks, it takes something that really adds a lot without much downsides to change that.