What do you like to salvage parts from? I like those crummy solar yard lights. Salvaging one yields you a rechargeable AA battery, a photo resistor, a solar cell, and a led. The bonus is that the lights themselves suck, so I'm sure no one would mind if you..erm....."borrowed" one from their yard.

 

Yeah, those solar yard lights are kind of bad at first, but can be made good. The AA batteries are cheap 600mAH, don't last very long on a charge.

The older ones I have use two batteries, I replace them with NiMH 1600+ mAH batteries, can stuff 4 AA in there. Then I can put a couple bright white Leds in place of the weak amber. Also runs a microcontroller pretty good. Programmed three for RGB color change, one for a 5 led chaser. Thinking about a flame effect and a few other things.

Got some newer ones cheap, with white LEDs and a single AA. Haven't messed with them yet, board is kind of confusing. The boost converter is interesting, but not sure if there is enough current for a microcontroller and LEDs.

If you can buy them for $3-5, why risk stealing them? I don't salvage much anymore. Most components are surface mount and house marked, so basically worthless. VCRs and computers are good for motors and gears, few other things.

 

I assume that the ones with a single cell use a Joul theif syle boost converter? I've never opened one up before but I'm not goind to buy one just for that.

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I pick them up sometimes when they are on sale, with the intent to modify them. Last batch were a 4-pack for 10.99, figured the solar panels would be worth the price. Actually turned out to be nice bright white, and last a good 6 hours or so (still on at 2 A.M.). Have others to modify that don't work as well, so leaving them for another time.

 

5 led chaser and RGB color changing? Those are some pretty cool mods you came up with.

 

Yeah, I've been learning AVR microcontrollers. The Tiny13 I've been using, will run off 1.8 volts. So anything that can light an LED... It's 8 pin, 6 I/o, but pin one gives me problems, so stick with 5.

Anyway, back to the salvaging parts... Guess I don't really look for the electronic components anymore, mostly motors and mechanical stuff.

 

That one pin is reset =) You have to set fuses to be able to use it, and even then it's still attached internally to some of the programming circuits so you have to be careful when using it.

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An LED on pin one is only half as bright compared to the other I/O pins. Tried disable reset fuse, pullups, pretty much anything I could find to no effect. So instead of 6 LEDs, I settled for 5, and just left it alone since. Been a while since I wrote that sequencer program. It was the first thing I did after the beginner Flash-an-LED...

 

Like I said Harvey, the internal drive for the reset pin is connected to different circuitry internally. If you want to fix the problem drive a transistor base, then you can tune the external resistor if need be. I/O pins aren't meant to drive LED's directly anyways. I think I went over this with you on a previous thread before, but that was multiple months ago.

Back on topic.
Printers, older DVD players, PC's and TV's are where I get all my junk from. A few laptops as well. Flatbed scanners are good, they usually have a CCFL tube and driver on issolated circuitry. I still have the first CCFL driver I ripped out of a scanner. Very nice module.

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yeah, i was wondering how the boost converter worked in mine because all the board consited of was a few diodes, transistors and resistors

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Dead bathroom scale: two strain gauges, pressure switch, and a funky 4 digit 7 Segment display with digits that are 1.5 inches tall.

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Old power supplies. Giant transformers, caps, power resistors, good panel mount components. They don't make em like they used to.

 

You could probably make a living selling old transformers =)

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My son found a guy who worked for a large home entertainment store chain and he was moving. He had lots of "not repairable" stereos, computer drives, cell phones and MP3 players. My son took it all and I used parts from one MP3 player to fix another of the same model. It now works perfectly. It has a 10MB hard drive.
This stuff has enough parts for me to use for many years.

EDIT: The MP3 player has a 10GB hard drive.

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Whaa? 10MB?