The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Junk: A damn fine idea!
I received my first (and hopefully not last) TGIMBOEJ today!TGIMBOEJ stands for "The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk", and the concept is simple; someone fills up a box full of electronics stuff and sends it to someone else. Generally the next recipient has signed up at the TGIMBOEJ web site and requested a box, although you can also add names to a list that comes with the box. When you get it you take what you want and add what you wish, then send it on to the whoever you choose. It is like the ultimate non-linear chain letter combined with Xmas for geeks.
I heard about it on the MAKE RRS feed posting and it sounded cool, so I went the the TGIMBOEJ web site and signed up to request a box. Within a couple of days I was contacted by "Ronald", who later we will see is from Gray, TN. I confirmed I wanted the box, and a few days later I received it. As per the requested protocol I am documenting what I find and what I take. Some of the stuff was quite boring (to me) and some of it was quite interesting (to me)!
I start with a picture of my "junk shredding area", an unfinished counter in a spare kitchen located in an unused section of our house. This is so you get a sense of scale when you see the migratory junk.
Here is the box. The box size is a TGIMBOEJ standard so as to keep shipping costs down. The 500ml bottle of water is for scale.
In the lower left corner we find the codename of this box, which is "Gray-A". I think I was the first recipient of this box, since it came from Gray, Tennessee and I was the first name on the "send to" manifest. I was rather amused at the note "Rattling is OK!!!", and I noticed on Flickr's TGIMBOEJ pool that most or all of the other migratory boxes in the wild say something similar. I guess until I read that it had not occurred to me how disconcerting such a clattertrap of a box might give the USPS cause for concern; they would probably assume they broke something in transit!
Opening the top shows a thin layer of packing paper.
Now we get down to it! PARTZ! SWAG! This was my first view of the junk.
Here I have meticulously, nee anally, sorted and attractively presented all the crap inside. There are about 18-20 pieces inside depending on how you count. Looks like it runs a fairly broad gamut! I will break down every single item for you, because I love you that much. Snootches!
First we have the cable pile. Short lengths of Cat5 in white or blue jackets, a standard "IEC" power cable with NEMA 5-15 on one end and a C13 line socket on the other, and a USB A-to-miniB cable with a ferrite.
The blue things are from a tractor-feed printer and used to advance the paper, to the upper right there is some kind of mechanism from a paper tape feeder like on a cash register or printing calculator, and the thing in the upper left is in all likelihood the guts to a multi-outlet power strip with telephone surge protection.
This is a close-up of the tractor feed mechanism, opened showing the "teeth" and closed as it would be to feed paper. I bet these suckers are getting hard to come by!
Top down, left to right: programmable digit thingy (more on this in a sec), broken pager, keypad with no keys and an LCD, the Petsmart recycling bag the LCD came in, and a fan with cut leads.
Except for serious pocket wear this is the only obvious damage to the pager:
OK, I feel REALLY stupid for not being able to remember what this is called! What it does is allow you to set a number on the display by using itty-bitty mechanical buttons that move the digits forward and back, and you can read the pins on the cable to determine what the digits are set to. Pretty cool.
Here we have an LCD display control panel with some printery options on it (maybe from the printer that gave up its tractor feeds?), a seriously old-school Sylvania VCR IR remote, and a near-mint Kodak Star 110 camera. I must admit the camera made me chuckle; I'm so damn old I remember when 110 was a brand-new format!
This was one of the cooler surprises; a new-in-the-box combo flashlight and lamp... or as the highly Eurocentric labeling says a "torch" and a "tube". When I pulled this out of the box I felt certain it must be a UV tube since it appears like a purple-tinged black.
This was deceptively cool; an electronic water valve for a refrigerator. When I glanced at the box I snickered and thought it was sort of lame, but when I pulled it out I realized this might absolutely MAKE someone's project. It looks like this inlet is about the same as a garden hose, making this absurdly flexible in application. I'm pleased as hell to forward this on and hope it finds a great home.
This is a speaker terminal block pulled from what must have been a nice home stereo speaker (or pro cab?). It has a little bit of soft foam stuck to the inside ring but it would be easy to clean off. Very nice, almost new.
I don't know what model it is, but it is obviously a Microsoft wireless optical mouse. You'll note that a dedicated USB receiver dongle is in its storage slot on the bottom. Probably plug and play for some Windows user who needs it.
And that is it!
I have to admit I was slightly disappointed. Maybe I expected too much from TGIMBOEJ, as some of the junk being shown off on the TGIMBOEJ Flickr pool was sooooooo damn appealing, but this box is brand new and it was started by a regular guy and his parts drawer, while I am pretty sure some of the stuff I have seen on Flickr was started by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories who doubtless have access to a tremendous amount of electronics swag. That said, Ronald started this box off well, and I am pumping it up quite a bit. Where some people have parts drawers I have parts ROOMS, and yes that is rooms plural. As an example of this I have taken a couple of shots of my counter showing what is located to the immediate left and right of the small "clean" spot I made so I could document this box. This is stuff I accumulated in about a month.
I have friends who know not to throw out anything remotely electronic or electrical; they give it to me and I strip it for treasure, then responsibly dispose of the remnants by taking it to a hazardous waste dropoff... which is a CRAPLOAD better than what most people do, which is just dump it into their usual trashcan to be hauled off to the city dump. ALMOST ALL ELECTRONIC CONSUMER PRODUCTS ARE HIGHLY TOXIC TO THE ENVIRONMENT! You REALLY should take all your TVs, DVD players, dead iPods, toasters, and just about anything else that uses electricity directly to a hazardous waste drop. Sure, they may just dump it in a shallow pit 75 miles outside of town in an undeveloped area of national forest, but at least you tried! ;)
This is what I am keeping; the combo light and the digit thingy:
Here is a shot of the combo light in "torch" mode:
And here is a shot in "tube" mode:
Here is what I am adding. More or less from left to right and from top to bottom:
--~20 stereo-capable thumbwheel pots with datasheets
--an old Blackberry
--the original model of Dell DJ, sans hard drive
--a remote controlled car who's supercap I burned up (remote incl.)
--an ST accelerometer demo board, which blinks an LED when it is bumped
--two Griffin Technology Powermates, one in silver and one in black
--2 LED samplers from Agilent (those bright ones are BRUTAL!)
--a Micronas headset reference board (basically a USB stereo audio card the size of a flash drive)
--a pack of Rohm-branded mints from CES 2006. I do not guarantee freshness. ;)
--a 4-LED 1-pushbutton circuit board pulled from an HP printer, with cable
--an optical sensor of some kind, also pulled from a printer
--a friggin' mess of infrared LEDs of various types, all nicely in Digikey bags so you can look them up.
--New-in-bag 9pin serial cable, probably came with a programmer and I have a kajillion already
--a first-surface mirror pulled from a laser printer
--I think the DIP chips include microphone conditioners, Cypress PSoCs, and some 3.57MHz NTSC colorburst oscillators
--a small grab-bag of optos I had lying around (giant LEDs, right-angles, dot matrix, etc.)
--a LiIon battery from a Motorola cell phone (very easy to interface with)
--a "SMD removal kit" from Emulation Technologies
--a slightly hacked-on GE CF reader (case is open, CF rails are shaved, but it works)
--a 6.5MHz crystal (where the hell did I get such an oddball?!?)
--some HP/Agilent IrDA transceivers
--two identical Cirrus Logic dev boards for IR comm (obviously you would want two)
I spent about an hour looking at the web sites listed on the TGIMBOEJ "request for box" page, trying to find that special someone who I thought deserved it. I decided to send this box as far away as I could, in order to help mix things up a bit, so I looked at people on the west coast. For those of you who leave nothing but your Twitter page, get a clue! Many people listed sites almost certain to go away, like Comcast user pages, Blogger and other "services", and all the other flavor-of-the-moment trendy web crap like MySpace and Facebook. It came down to 3 people, and the one who gets the box had her own domain and web site with actual interesting content.
Here is a link to the whole Flickr photo pool, in case you want to see something in higher resolution:
Don's TGIMBOEJ Flickr pool
I would like to thank Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for coming up with the concept of TGIMBOEJ and getting the ball rolling, thanks to the TGIMBOEJ wiki for providing a place to learn more and request a box, and Ronald from Gray, Tenneessee for starting off a new box ("Gray-A")and sending it to me.
I eagerly look forward to my next box! :)
(C) 2008 Don Stratton
seven comments:
What a wonderful idea! I was the TGIMBOEJ on their wiki (where i found your blog). Im not too far from you in lebanon TN. I have a plethora of electronics junk i’ve been scavanging for a while now, and my “junk” has been getting more interesting since MTSU has started cleaning out their closets and giving box fulls of random components and parts to me. I wanted to get on the box listing, but i currently have no website other than the lame ole myspace (which i never check). school takes up most of my time, so things like making websites seem to get lost in the cracks. drop me a line if ya want, i’ve been looking for some electro-geekey friends like myself to collaborate with on projects.
Bob Warner () - 10 09 08 - 05:23
oops, “was” in the 2nd sentence should have been saw. lol
bob warner () - 10 09 08 - 05:25
Don
Hey, so who got this box? I was looking to see where it gotr to and no one has updated the wiki after you.
Ronald () - 11 17 08 - 14:20
Hi Ronald,
In the interest of sending the box as far away as practical, but within my own snotty aesthetic review of candidate’s websites, I settled on Ann (http://www.randomnonsequitur.com/) and she is in California. I have to admit I had several delays in sending out the box, so Ann has probably only had it for 3-4 weeks. I’ll update the TGIMBOEJ tracking page to reflect my shipping it out, and we’ll all have to keep monitoring the TGIMBOEJ website (http://tgimboej.org/Box_Tracking) to look for updates from Ann.
Thanks again for sending me the box!
Don Stratton () (link) - 11 17 08 - 17:56
Don
Thanks for the update. I just like to watch these go along. I just shipped out another a few weeks agao and will have a 3rd together soon. This 3rd one will be the best on yet I think. I am making the hard choices of what stays and what goes in my renovation. Too Little space and Too much stuff packed up over lots of projects.
Thanks again.
Ronald () - 11 18 08 - 13:01
OK, I feel REALLY stupid for not being able to remember what this is called! What it does is allow you to set a number on the display by using itty-bitty mechanical buttons that move the digits forward and back, and you can read the pins on the cable to determine what the digits are set to.
BCD switches.
Jan () - 12 06 08 - 15:22
BCD switches.
Thanks, Jan! :)
Don Stratton () (link) - 12 06 08 - 18:21