diybookscanner.org topic of blog post

[rightbraincreative]

It was with great enthusiasm I read your DIY BookScanner Instructable. I've started a new blog on making information available to the public and I've written a post that highlights your scanner and your website. I know you are very busy, but if you get a chance, check it out:

informationsshouldbefree.blogspot.com/2010/01/digitize-your-own-library-genesis-of.html

On a different topic: I was especially fond of your emphasis on reusing and recycling and dumpster diving. Of particular interest was step #38 where you found an old camcorder.
I too am very fond of acquiring old technolgy and salvaging parts. In fact, I have several camcorders awaiting their "autopsie". The problem I have is, after dissecting my first specimen I found that A.) it was very difficult to break in to and B.) I was dissapointed with the small number of salvageable parts.
The back portion was very much like the inside of a VCR and I salvaged pretty much the same parts as such. I also saved the optics and a couple of stepper motors that controlled the zoom feature of the lens.
Did I miss something of importance? Is there a "trick" to opening these guys up?
After reading the fine details of your book scanner Instructable, I think you would be a highly qualified cadidate to write a few Instructables on dissecting some of the more common disposed electronics including old camcorders.

[daniel_reetz]

Thanks for the kind words and the blog post! I hope we'll soon see a "Rightbraincreative's Build Thread" in the Hardware section.

As far as camcorders go, they are rather complicated to get apart, usually with the body consisting of many strangely interlocking plastic parts that also serve as mounts for the internals.

The only items that you might have missed would be the recording head -- with a little massaging they can make great super-smooth knobs or pulleys, and also I salvage all the fine wire, it's good for small electronics work.

I have thought many times about writing up other Instructables. I have an extensive dumpster-diving tutorial that will go online in 2010, and electronics salvage might also be good. The big thing for me right now is just that I need to prioritize my graduate work at NDSU, so that one day I'll have a degree and free time to actually write again.

[rightbraincreative]

Some final thoughts...

On the camcorder I dissected, behind the optics was a component that obviously captured the incoming light that would eventually become the video on the tape. I am not sure how this works, what it is called or if has any practical purpose in tinkering, but I saved it. what are your thoughts.

And secondly, my favorite dumpster diving spot:
The are several "auction houses" in the area that host weekly auctions. The inventory varies from estates, to business closings, to garage sale leftovers. It's never the same week to week. I do atttend the auctions themselves. This is also a green way to obtain many reusable items, but the big score comes the day after the auction. The nature of auctioning is to continue to add items to the current lot being auctioned until there is enough to get that all elusive opening bid (it's $1 here). Sometimes more and more junk is added to the pile until there is an overwhelming pile.More often than not, the winning bidder takes the one or two items he wanted and leaves the rest for the auction house to dispose of. Personally, I stay after the auction is over and help the auctioneer clean up the mess. This gives me the chance to get first choice of the prime future refuse. (The auction house dumpster is a very popular place the day after the auction.)

Thanks for your website - it's a positive contribution to mankind.

[StevePoling]

I have an extensive dumpster-diving tutorial that will go online in 2010, and electronics salvage might also be good.

I will be very interested in this tutorial.

Universities at the end of term are great. At the end of spring term my daughter got tons of stuff at U of Michigan.

Best thing for dumpster diving is international students. They're getting on a plane to go home; they're not carrying their Ramen noodles back to Korea. Or the like. She gave me a graphics tablet that came out of a trash last year.

This year on move-out day I saw next to a dumpster a box full of magazines. I recognized the cover and did a double take. In 8th grade a friend of mine found the exact same Playboy magazines in my school paper drive. (If I didn't have a moral scruple about it, I'd have snatched them up and sold them on ebay.)

As it was we loaded up the van with a couple tables, a nice big wastebasket, futon mattress (last year we got a frame and no mattress), some rugs and a lamp. With a bigger van we would have had a bigger haul. This summer my daughter had a huge garage sale and sold most of it to help pay for Oxford.

[IcantRead]

I have heard but can not verify that places like Barns & Noble or Borders have some great stuff in there dumpsters. To my understanding when a book or magazine can not be sold they rip off the cover and send it back to the publisher, and then the rest of the book goes in the dumpster.