[Noisebridge-discuss] Hackshelves missing stuff?

[Zach]

Hey everyone,
  Ones thing Ive noticed at NB more recently is a lot of "recycled hack goods" disappearing from the shelves in very large quantities.  I'm wondering if someone is trying to be a good semaritan by recycling them (?)  It would be nice to keep this stuff at NB for projects though.  Was helping some people 2 days ago build a robot and there were ZERO batteries to be found at NB (??)  That got me thinking more about the disappearing stuff in recent months:
 
- Old Cell phones (we had a massive bin of these)
- Batteries (Jake donated a massive bin of great Laptop batteries and there was also a crate of lead acids.  The former were later were def on their way out though...)
- Ethernet cables (there was a brown crate (closed lid type) with a thousand of these, now all gone?)
- PCB/motherboard scrap (had 4 bins of these at one point and it was GREAT for part pulling.  Someone 'recycled' these a while ago I think..)
 
Anyway, maybe at a future meeting we could talk about hack stuff that is good for the space versus trash to get rid of.  Or I could volunteer to help sort if someone wants to work on this.  It is one of the most useful things about the space I think to have this stuff around for building awesome projects.  I'll give one example:  During a Linux class last week someone needed a 12v to 5v stepdown for the new Rasberry Pi.  He was going to go spend $$ at the store for something in a few days and really didn't know what was needed.  So we..
-used the whiteboard to draw out and explain DC DC v. LDO voltage circuits 
and 
-pulled a ancient Linksys router from the "router and networking" scrap bin...the old mother board had an entire DC-DC converter circuit for 12v to 5v, 12v to 3.3v, and another one...all high efficiendy and rated >1.9A output! (we checked the datasheet online)...all for free and reusing e-waste AND educating!
 
Just one example of why NB and motherboard scrap is awesome :)
 
Zach
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