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Creative Recycling: Dumpster Diving
gnewton writes "One angle of Open Source software that perhaps has not been emphasised enough is how the lower cost of software and operating systems as compared to proprietary/commercial solutions can allow for greater creativity and actually open up markets and solutions that were previously unavailable, in the area of Recycling. This article talks about a new startup which recycles old LCDs into cool and fun digital picture frames."
That's neat... really, I would love an alternative to buying the LCD picture frames on sale at Thinkgeek.com for more than the cost of a brand new LCD monitor of equal or larger size...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Last week I covered Roku, the high-end digital media player for HDTV buyers with money to burn. Roku was founded and financed by Anthony Wood, who made out well when he sold ReplayTV to SonicBlue. He's a rich guy selling gizmos to other rich guys, but not all startups have Anthony's resources. Here is a success story from one resource-challenged startup. Wallflower, which is also in the digital photograph display business, managed to get itself off the ground with a strategy I've seen only once before: dumpster diving.
The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture frames--most importantly, working 12" LCD panels.
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drives--you put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.
Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these things--but what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.
With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.
There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Another company in this space, RetroBox, makes money coming and going. First of all, they take in used computers from businesses that no longer need of them, and carefully scrub the hard disks clean of data--companies are so worried that old machines will get out into the world with sensitive data on them that they'll pay nicely for this service. Then, of course, RetroBox is free to re-sell the scrubbed hardware to new users or to re-builders like Wallflower.
But back to Wallflower. I love this story, since it combines the identification of an unusual but growing market space (digital picture frames) with the extremely clever, low-cost startup strategy of making its first products from unloved, unsold, obsolete technology. The founders knew full well that strategy wouldn't scale if they became successful, and they were able to switch to more ordinary production methods when they did, about one-and-a-half years ahead of plan.
As I said earlier, this manufacturing model isn't completely new: In 2000, startup Scout Electromedia released the Modo, a pager-like device that functioned as a city guide in New York. Scout made me look like a chump by folding shortly after I wrote a Catch of the Day about it. But the guts of the unsold Modos lived on: Wideray's first batch of products (it makes devices that beam data to PDAs and phones) used disassembled Modos for their pager receivers; it was a lot cheaper than buying or building new parts. Three years later, Wideray is of course no longer using Mo
I'd love to RTFA, but all I get is a bunch of banner ads, and an invitation to join the "Always on Network".
Did the poster mess up, or is this IE acting wonky?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
... the article with links...
New Startup Secret: Dumpster Diving - Rafe Needleman
Last week I covered Roku, the high-end digital media player for HDTV buyers with money to burn. Roku was founded and financed by Anthony Wood, who made out well when he sold ReplayTV to SonicBlue. He's a rich guy selling gizmos to other rich guys, but not all startups have Anthony's resources. Here is a success story from one resource-challenged startup. Wallflower, which is also in the digital photograph display business, managed to get itself off the ground with a strategy I've seen only once before: dumpster diving.
The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture framesmost importantly, working 12" LCD panels.
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drivesyou put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.
Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these thingsbut what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.
With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.
There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Another company in this space, RetroBox, makes money coming and going. First of all, they take in used computers from businesses that no longer need of them, and carefully scrub the hard disks clean of datacompanies are so worried that old machines will get out into the world with sensitive data on them that they'll pay nicely for this service. Then, of course, RetroBox is free to re-sell the scrubbed hardware to new users or to re-builders like Wallflower.
But back to Wallflower. I love this story, since it combines the identification of an unusual but growing market space (digital picture frames) with the extremely clever, low-cost startup strategy of making its first products from unloved, unsold, obsolete technology. The founders knew full well that strategy wouldn't scale if they became successful, and they were able to switch to more ordinary production methods when they did, about one-and-a-half years ahead of plan.
As I said earlier, this manufacturing model isn't completely new: In 2000, startup Scout Electromedia released the Modo, a pager-like
Sounds like a cool project. Anyone in the OpenSource community done one?
not even 5 minutes after being posted and it's already /.ed
Mirrors anyone?
So if I hang out around SCO, when they go bust... what will I find?
Ah dammit.
:-)
:-)
One of the sites using hostip.info has a smily/ok/sad face at the top of the page. Imagine a photo of your loved one which reacted to how they felt at the time
Real-time feeds of "I'm happy", "I'm sad" could come from SMS, email, web, irc, whatever, and update the picture.
Look, it's my idea, and there's no copyright or patents on it, ok, feel free to do whatever you want
Physicists get Hadrons!
If you actually read the article you'd already know this, but the startup referred to in the post is actually Wallflower [http://www.wallflower-systems.com/], not Roku.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
..is off again.
into toilet paper would not be desirable. Everything from SCO is already full of feces.
A creative use of an LCD I suppose. I would really like to read more about it... However, it appears someone needs to dive their dumpster and recycle their bandwith from the slashdot effect...
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
This is the 2nd story linked to always on where the site is plastered in milliseconds. We should file a class action demanding they either change their domain name to the "always-toast" network or pay us each ONE MILLION Dollars, Muwahahaha.
So far, the best thing I've gotten from the article is the link to RetroBox.com, an outfit that buys old equipment from companies, wipes the HD, and resells them.
My company used to have an annual old equipment sale for employees. It was so popular, you actually had a lottery drawing for line position -- like a rock concert. But when we got bought by the Faceless International Corporation Ltd, that was just one of the personal touches we lost.
Hard to beat a $70 laptop... even if it does have a dark spot on the screen!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I remember seeing an short story on Discovery Channel about some place in Asia that is the dumping ground for all of the worlds digital equipment. It was quite scary seeing young kids waddling around in lord knows WHAT chemicals trying to get to the gold in monitors.
A company could make a killing recycling computers. But into what?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I'd like to recycle my old notebook's LCD into a secondary monitor for my desktop. Does anyone have any ideas how one could do that?
You really start to feel shit when you hear your laptop is worth more when broken instead of working. :(
Hate me!
Old Apple laptops make great picture frames such as this Duo hack described on Applefritter. All but the earliest Powerbooks supported color images and have some form of built-in networking.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
They should market open source using a green penguin. Now THAT is impossible to resist.
MY SECRET DIARIES
Sorry, but the LCD screens that were likely on laptops relegated to the dumpster heap are probably way too crappy to be worth hanging on my wall. It's cool as a hack, but I sure wouldn't pay $500 for it.
Slashdot owners don't own mirrors. The pathology arising from exposure to their uniquely pathetic visages would likely induce elevated rates of auto-termination in the subject group.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Isn't this the second time this week alwayson has been /.'ed?
:)
Are the editors doing this on purpose?
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Now when you see all those hundereds of CRTs in old sci-fi shows you'll know whey - some time in 2040 they started recycling 50 year old monitors and using them in space ships.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I picked up one of the nicest LCD screens I've ever seen from an old 486 laptop a while back. It's a neat little 9" job, perfect for a picture frame, secondary display, or what have you. So I did a little research on what I could do with this thing...
:(
Short answer: pretty much nothing.
Long answer: The video hardware necessary to convert a VGA signal into the controls for an LCD panel is embedded directly into the motherboard. I suppose if you were enterprising enough you could play with a hacksaw and some FPGA's or something. Every website I could find repeated the same thing: proprietary interface, and no success for the most part. You're talking 50+ wires leading into the LCD panel, so even if you knew what you were doing (like a very few do - some have actually succeeded in this), it's still a LOT of work.
Addendum: I've pretty much decided to just use the thing as a remote terminal window that I can mount over my bed, or somewhere else where I might want to get a shell but not have a computer handy. This is still going to involve a lot of messing about, and unfortunately the motherboard/drives/power supply will have to be included somehow, but I'm working on an extension cable to at least be able to have the display a few feet from the rest of the guts. We'll see how that affects picture quality - these wires are an insanely small guage, and I haven't been able to find the right spare plugs in case I screw up
Anyway, best of luck, and if any other slashdotters have any ideas, please, share!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
http://www.eio.com/lcdconnect.htm
You can't simply connect VGA or NTSC signal to an LCD panel. Click on the link above to read why and whether it's worth the effort.
IMHO, Wallflower could have done the same with a small business loan. (and avoided wasting time buying junk from ebay, taking apart laptops,etc)
LCDs can be bought from China for very little $, if you place a large order. (Thus the SBL)
http://www.china-tft.com
Wow...what I just wrote isn't funny...should I delete it...Oh, go on and "troll mod" me for this misfire. I don't care.
..check out David Tholen:
e =U TF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=bpiesb%24r1p%241%40online.de &prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe% 3DUTF-8%26group%3Drec.music.classical
He hangs out in rec.music.classical, although he's also active on OS/2 newsgroups.
He writes these crazy lists of people he considers are antagonistic towards him, although even asking him a single, simple question can get you added to the list. Check it out:
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&i
or just search rec.music.classical for the word `antagonist`.
He's inspired the following site.
http://members.tripod.com/~tholen_of_borg/
To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay...
This is not what I would consider dumpster diving. buying from eBay is buying from eBay, not crawling around on the bottom of a dumpster at 11pm at night. A friend and I actually tried it once. I got a few binders and Volume 1 and 2 of the West's California Judicial Council Forms. It takes a lot of perserverance to get anything worth keeping (electronics).
I remember seeing the company name in the story when it was first posted. Now it says "new startup" with no company name. Maybe there was a conflict of interest with the frames Thinkgeek sells.
I did this some time ago (like the middle of last winter) with a Compaq Presario 1220 laptop, the result looked nice, and was "input-less" except for remote connections.. is anyone out there interested in pictures? If you are, I will see if I can dig them up and post them someplace "unslashdotable."
its amazing how fun and useful the little modular parts turn out to be. :)
tiny character lcd modules, digital radio tuners, serial vfd's and even a 1" b/w crt monitor from a 1980's vhs-purse camera.
cant wait til i start finding reprogrammable pic-micros and nano-itx dvd players
thats what i prefer to call the bums that dig through my trash cans. they look like they re really giving it to the side of the trash can when they re digging deep... its really funny. ideas for fun tape a dollar to the bottom of the trash can, then sit and wait for one to come by it creates many hours of laughter. Its great for parties!
I have an old notebook that the screen has come detacted from (i.e. screen works, computer works, but two halves are now detached). It's even got a LinkSys wireless PCMCIA card!
I wonder if Wallflower provides any sort of refurbishing service or kits to turn my "bruised but not broken" hardware into a WiFi picture frame? If not, might be an additional revenue stream/modified business model to think about, eh?
The Worldwide (!) Freecycle Network is open to all cities and to all individuals who want to "recycle" that special something rather than throw it away. Whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano or an old door, feel free to post it. Or maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself! One constraint: everything posted must be free.
The site is organized by cities and most of the chapters seem to be yahoo groups, so you can't do online browsing (now there's an idea for Ebay: a "free to a good home" service for nonprofits [subject to verification and limited so as not to dent their cash flow, of course]). Still, it's a neat alternative to the landfill.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Please use this link (I have this feeling that my bootstraps are trying to tell me something, oh well.)
The summary is not quite accurate. According to the article practically the entire notebook was reused, not just some "old LCDs". They more or less converted the (old but unused) notebooks' form factor into a wooden frame layout and added a $30 WiFi PCMCIA card. I would assume they removed the keyboard, battery and CD-ROM / floppy drive, but kept all of the rest of an already whole sytem. So they would be saving far more than just the cost of a new LCD per unit.
Also, purchasing a couple hundred old but unused notebooks of one specific model in bulk is hardly dumpster diving.
Yes, they were able to undercut the competition by utilizing a rare low-cost resource, thus "suceeding" in an existing market. But how does that translate into future business success now that they have to compete on a level playing ground with their competitors?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I tried troll mod but it misfired. Now what?
recycles old LCDs into cool and fun digital picture frames
Aha! A shill! No one uses the term "fun" to describe things like picture frames unless that person is in marketing. Admit it...you work for the company. Either that, or...
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Is this the LCD picture frame project from this cool linux projects book? I guess this is as close as a mirror so far...
I think we've killed them. The server's unavailable for me. Although all your posts do make it sound quite exciting.
I thought that was searching through peoples dumpsters looking for information that "wants to be free" such as credit card slips/bank statements....
On reflection perhaps the anonymous button was a good one to press...
i found a paintball gun the other day. just wanted to mention.
sig - .
For some of us, it's more like a method of furnishing our homes, decorating our walls and when things get really bad, finding the "refrigerator crate of our dreams" to keep the rain off.
Freedom: "I won't!"
As some posters correctly pointed out, you need an LCD controller interface to drive an LCD panel. It's possible you could get the correct controller for your panel from this page, which has a very good listing of LCD controllers (thank you, whoever put it up). The controllers that have prices seem a bit expensive though - around $200 each.
I read somewhere that VIA was going to introduce Mini-ITX motherboards with an LVDS (low voltage differential signalling) LCD interface - so it could directly drive an LCD panel. I think some non-VIA Mini-ITX manufacturers already offer such motherboards. So that might be a better option.
A google query for "mini-itx lvds" shows this as the first link.
From the thread...
I've found a few Mini-ITX motherboards with LVDS controllers. For those not familiar with Mini-ITX, it's a small form factor type of motherbaord. They are very quiet, and use very little power. CPU, Graphics, Audio, and LAN are all integrated.
The cheapest one with an LVDS controller is $200. It's a 600mhz board, wich is decent enough for playing DVDs and most Mpg-4, and since the board has a PCI slot a TV card could be installed. For $230 you can geta 1ghz board. Anyone know anything about the controller or what type of screen could be used? This could make for a great all-in-one media PC.
looks like it's about to have it's first downtime.
I think they need to reconsider names now.
I run the computer lab where I work. And before I get rid of any old computers or computer parts I always offer them up to the people I work with. Many of the computers we now get rid of make great second computers for kids to do their homework on or to access the internet with.
Our company actually has to pay to have our stuff recylced so this way I save the company money and I get to help some people out.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I would love an alternative to buying the LCD picture frames on sale at Thinkgeek.com for more than the cost of a brand new LCD monitor of equal or larger size...
I agree. Though ThinkGeek has all sorts of other cool stuff.
But as part of the software loaded onto these things, maybe they should offer a distributed client of some sort? I'm sure it would work as a selling feature: "Your new frame will display pictures and work on finding a cure for cancer."
Of course, if these are all >= Pentiums, they have a HALT instruction to reduce power consumption at idle. But this might be a neat feature for people who don't pay for electricity.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Personally I haven't done much dumpster diving, but my younger brother, who is still in college, goes all the time.
According to his stories, his plan of attack goes like this: Find a nice area of town, where there are lots of national retailers in a new shopping center. (He calls these Giant-Land, since all the stores tend to be friggin huge.) Look for the bigger stores (i.e. Wal-Mart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Crate and Barrel, Pier One, etc..) and drive around to the service side. Make a note of which stores have trash compactors and which stores just have dumpsters.
Keeping this in mind, come back at a later (and darker) hour and take a look in some of those dumpsters. You will be suprised at what huge retail stores throw away! And since retail stores dont really generate that much real "garbage", most of the stuff is pretty clean.
For example: My little bro and some friends visited a Wal-Mart next to his apartment, and came home with literally TWO truck beds full of breakfast cereal and crackers. Another visit revealed an entire dumpster full of shrink wrapped couch pillows. Televisions and stereos with missing power cables, power tools, boxes of out of date/holiday candy, hand tools, an entire dumpster full of working light bulbs... and everything brand new! Craziness I tell you!
It's rediculous what these places just throw away. I guess just trashing everything saves them money on the processing needed to get things to people who could use actually use it.
My entire company lies full with old PAlm V's and their desktop cradle. What I'm dreaming about is hooking them permanently as a second screen that can show (B/W) pictures, show the text of the last received email etc.... Unfortunately, I have no idea how to program a Palm. Is anything similar out there?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
This is something I've been thinking of doing for a while - all you need is a minimal OS install on the laptop (enough to provide a graphical display and networking) and an app that'll do a continuous slideshow of the images in a given directory (either local or remote)
I've been using this screensaver on my Desktop PC (Windows, I'm ashamed to admit), which is a clone of the screensaver in OSX (does nice zooms and fades between your photos)
Then you just dismantle the laptop, fold it up so the keyboard can be hidden away (or removed entirely, if the machine can cope) and re-mount it in a nice frame
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
Ya see, there's enough nasty stuff (lead, mercury, etc.) in a computer that, while not a concern when normally used, it suddenly acquires the HAZARDOUS WASTE label when the computing resources department deems the machine unuseable. Once declared unusable (broken hard drive, scratched display, whatever) and tracked for recycling, the federal government declares it HAZMAT and requires a chain-of-custody paperwork and handling so strict that one faces $100,000 fines and felony-level jail times for merely taking it from the trash pile.
In Medievial England, stealing garbage from royalty was a hanging offense. That sentiment has returned: just trying to revive a dead computer to improve your work resources can get you fired, even jailed.
Be careful of "creative recycling" and "dumpster diving". You're trying to save some old hardware, the feds think you're criminally evading the HAZMAT laws.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I've done this now about 4 times, using old laptops and it really does get some great coments when people see it on your wall...
A friend of mine has been trying to get me to sell these things but I don't want to support them!
maybe if I get some time I will put together a howto, as I've discovered a lot of things in doing it...
You definitely don't want to take the entire laptop apart, it's easiest just to remove the screen from it's hinges and flip it over and remount it in it's own hinges, then mount the entire laptop on the back of the frame!
also, I've found using X is a waste of resources. SVGAlib works well! I will take some pictures sometime soon... you're welcome to visit my site to see if I've posted them!