zerowaste

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Discussing ways to reduce waste and build community!

Celebrate thrift as a virtue, talk about creative ways to make do, or show off how you reused something!

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JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net

Why it is worthwhile to dissect e-waste -- there are sometimes useful gems therein (slrpnk.net)

submitted 1 day ago by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/zerowaste@slrpnk.net

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Found laptops on the street fully abused and often smashed to bits. Recently pulled a 160gb SSD out of one. That’s worth keeping, as well as the RAM, often.

TV tuners/media players: they sometimes have internal hard drives. I recently pulled a 320gb 2½″ HDD out of one. Even though that’s likely too small to serve as someone’s laptop system, anything bigger than 120gb is big enough to store a copy of the whole Debian system including all apps (5 blu-rays merged these days).

All DC powered electronics: it’s useful to cannabalize the female barrel connector. There are many universal PSUs with a collection of male tips, but never female tips. The female tips are useful for making your own barrel adapters, instead of cutting and soldering your OEM PSUs.

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[–] Kagu@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I recently pulled a color LCD from a vape. I can't believe ppl throw this stuff in landfill.

However, having trouble driving it in the sense that I have no idea how. I have an esp8266 and started looking at arduino but if you have any advice lmk.

LCD has a FPC 10-pin cable and I know the original MCU that drove it, but thats it

[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 4 points 19 hours ago

TBH I don't know that much. If it is a wider ribbon (40-50 pins), it is parallel RGB (5 or 6 bits per color, clock, power, etc). But for 10 pin cable, it probably uses some protocol to communicate.

Since it's from a vape, it has to be widely available. I would find the model number (even look for similar LCDs on ali or ebay), then find the specs/datasheet/documentation - it should specify which pin is which and what voltages and signals they expect.