Scavengable circutry

[polar bear6]

does anyone know of any good scavengable circuits that are good for a hobby robot builder?
the only i know of is motor controlling, RC toys and camera flash circuit...
another one is probably computer mice, for wheel encoding, but i dont know what kind of signals a PC mouse makes.
I'm bascially thinking of circuits thats easily found in electronic junk.
 

[Admin]

computer floppy drives, tape players, cd players

anything with moving parts generally has good useful stuff . . .

[Militoy]

Don't forget the power supply from an old PC for bench testing circuits. For bigger robots, I've picked up toy electric cars (the kind kids ride in), and even an old electric wheelchair. I'm lucky to have a big electronic surplus shop near my work, and I've picked up Opto-22 industrial controllers there, as well as stepper motors, sensors, cameras, etc. I even picked up a batch of take-out Rabbit 2000 microprocessor boards there about a year and a half ago (needed 2 - bought 20 for $40 or so).

[trigger]

vcr's are great. just stay away from tv's and monitors unless you want to get zapped 

[polar bear6]

okey i think explain what i meant, what im thinking of is a piece of a bigger curcuit that you can remove or cut out with a dremel or something, and then solder wires on the different inputs or outputs, then use that piece of curcuit as a module for something.

[Admin]

tv remote controls have IR transmitter stuff, and the tv has a reciever . . . maybe hack that for a bot?

'poor' robot builders collect all the electronics they can find and just store it in a closet. when they need something, they open up the closet to look for it . . .

[Militoy]

'poor' robot builders collect all the electronics they can find and just store it in a closet.

I don't fit into the "poor" category anymore, but I guess I kind of got into the habit of scrounging electronics junk, from the time I was in Junior High and High School. I still hate to see "good" parts tossed out - so my wife made me buy a steel ocean container, to clear my stack of parts and equipment out of the garage!

[Dosbomber]

I used to work for an ATM repair company (they fixed money machines), and one of the parts they'd go through pretty often were off-the-shelf USR modems (PC-card internal type).  They had an Omron 5V relay on them that retails (still) for about $2 USD, which worked fine (the problems were in the modem firmware, apparently).  Anyway, they desoldered nicely and now I have a junk parts bin full of those relays, and a bunch of other parts I scavenged off "dead" boards.  DIP switches, relays, switches, and lots more... all easily found and desoldered from boards other people would throw out.

[Hal9000]

I'd say cassette players. If I had a box of them, I'd go nuts.

[Cybran]

One of the best goldmines of wiring I still use is an old set of Christmas lights. Several hundred feet of thin-ish wire and bulbs for all sorts of wiring and projects. You can find these (of course) after Christmas when people toss them out. Also, the plastic coating the wire supposedly has lead in it, so make sure you use wire strippers and not your teeth.

[little-c]

anything with a circuit board?


rc stuff always has something scavengable.
printers are good.
old low memory harddrives of ebay for 4 quid are good, a few little bits of the board, and a uber cool stepper motor, and the reader head thing is sometimes useful.
old optical mice, for switches, trackerball mice for switches and encoders, wires ect.


just short any capacitors you see, better safe then shocked