Work

ProtoPCB: Reclaiming Printed Circuit Board E-waste as Prototyping Material

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: We propose an interactive tool that enables reusing printed circuit boards (PCB) as prototyping materials to implement new circuits—this extends the utility of PCBs rather than discards them as e-waste. To enable this, our tool takes a user's desired circuit schematic and analyzes its components and connections to find methods of creating the user's circuit on discarded PCBs (e.g., e-waste, old prototypes). In our technical evaluation, we utilized our tool across a diverse set of PCBs and input circuits to characterize how often circuits could be implemented on a different board, implemented with minor interventions (trace-cutting or bodge-wiring), or implemented on a combination of multiple boards—demonstrating how our tool assists with exhaustive matching tasks that a user would not likely perform manually. We believe our tool offers: (1) a new approach to prototyping with electronics beyond the limitations of breadboards and (2) a new approach to reducing e-waste during electronics prototyping.

Source: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3714095

Authors: Jasmine Lu, Sai Rishitha Boddu, Pedro Lopes

Institution: University of Chicago

Language: English

Topic: Recycling and Waste Management Techniques

Subfield: Waste Management and Disposal

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: University of Chicago