I recently saw a a couple of choice electronic items and a
stack of unopened Radio Shack products near the trash area of my
apartment complex. Being the discerning consumer and dumpster-diver
that I am, I rounded up the Shack boxes and took the best couple
large items for further investigation. The unopened merchandise was
a pretty random mix of stuff: two extendable antennas, a small
transformer, some cable holders, etc. The transformer might make
its way into a power supply build in the future. Overall a nice
pile of stuff I probably wouldn’t buy/have otherwise. The larger
items were even better, however. One was a robotic vacuum unit
(iRobot Roomba Discovery). I removed all the motors, sensors, and
other electronics from it right away, and haven’t revisited the
resulting box of goodies since. It was an awesome haul, and I’ll
get to it in due time. The other large item was a power strip/bar.
It’s the kind I used to see all the time in computer labs and the
like: href="http://beeztronics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/powerbarstrip.jpg.jpg"> class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-23" title="powerbarstrip.jpg"
src="http://beeztronics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/powerbarstrip.jpg-300x225.jpg"
alt="Computer Power Switching Bar" width="300" height="225"
/> It works fine as-is, but after opening it and
seeing all the unused space inside, I think I’m going to work some
extra power supply magic into it. I have a power brick that outputs
1.5 amps of both 12 volts and 5 volts, so I’m going to put that
inside with a bunch of taps on the side. I’d like to include some
USB power ports as well, considering how many of my projects are
powered that way. It’s easy to get carried away working on a bench
power supply, so I’m going to keep it pretty simple. I’ll post an
update on it soon.