The Logansryche Thread

[logansryche]

That's an idea to look into and electric generators use a battery, an inverter, and a set of solar panals. I wouldn't dare use a traditional generator mostly because of noise.

[logansryche]

Just received an email back from B&C Storage(their the closest to me and the cheapest) and they said they were more then happy to let me rent one of their lockers to conduct my type of business and all I'd need to do is come by and pay for it. Also as a backup, I've deleted and resubmitted my kickstarter campaign this time asking for $5,000 instead of $25,000. I also have a more detailed list of where the money's going instead of just saying where it's going, and it's as exact as possible(would leave me with $813 to do something with). I've also looked into it a bit more and I do not need any sort of business license or certification because of where everything would be hosted at.

Bin wise, looks like they'll be 4x4x5' ID and be made out of 1/2" sheet steel so their heavy enough to withstand the elements. Doors will have piano hinges and the access door will be padlocked. When I go to make the sign for it, I'll make sure to specify that I do not under any circumstances accept CRT tvs or monitors. I'd post a 3d image with dimensions but not sure if it'd convey correctly. I've also come across a site called freecycle where everything that's bought or sold is free so I posted an ad that i'm looking for some box steel, sheet steel, a portable welder, and some sticks. Worse come to worse I use that extra $813 to get the metal and welder I require. I've also been tempted to see about partnering up with USAgain and use their bins to collect electronics(again specifying no to CRTs) but not sure how that would go over. I see their bins everywhere and their usually overfilled with clothes and whatnot.

That's it from my little corner,
Matt

[etack]

Just received an email back from B&C Storage(their the closest to me and the cheapest) and they said they iwere more then happy to let me rent one of their lockers to conduct my type of business and all I'd need to do is come by and pay for it. Also as a backup, I've deleted and resubmitted my kickstarter campaign this time asking for $5,000 instead of $25,000. I also have a more detailed list of where the money's going instead of just saying where it's going, and it's as exact as possible(would leave me with $813 to do something with). I've also looked into it a bit more and I do not need any sort of business license or certification because of where everything would be hosted at.

Bin wise, looks like they'll be 4x4x5' ID and be made out of 1/2" sheet steel so their heavy enough to withstand the elements. Doors will have piano hinges and the access door will be padlocked.
Matt

You might want to rethink your bins with .5" steel. This bin will weigh 2400#. Dumpster aren't made like that.

.5" steel weight 20# Ft^2
Eric

[logansryche]

was the only thing i could think of where it'd be heavy enough where someone won't attempt to tow it away. 1/8" steel or would that still be too heavy. I want the bins to be able to hold their own so no one tows em away to a yard.

[armygreywolf]

If you don't want it towed away...leave it next to a light pole in a parking lot...that's what they do with the clothing and shoe donation bins around here, and those are plastic.

[logansryche]

Are they? the one's near me are all metal. Then again for clothing, USAgain has the monopoly on locations. What about an aluminum cover over say, a 96gal trash container on wheels? It'd be a light set up and wouldn't cost much to set up. Location and theift are still a worry but I think I might have a solution for that. Thanks for the input.

[matador]

I'd go for a square bin, personally. Circles are not an efficient shape. You could probably build one with some plywood and 2x3s at the Home Depot for not much money. I'd chain mine to a light pole, personally. It's not theft-proof, but it'll make it more theft resistant.

[CTSSolutions]

If you don't want it towed away...leave it next to a light pole in a parking lot...that's what they do with the clothing and shoe donation bins around here, and those are plastic.

I would leave them in a well lit area and make sure on your "ABSOLUTLEY NO CRTs" sign that it says the area is monitored by security cameras and dumping is prohibited by law. (Even if there are no cameras...tell them there are cameras)

As stated above - 1/2" is probaly overkill. 1/8" might be a little light and dent easily when people throw computers in your bin. But at least you'd be able to move it if need be.

I don't know where you plan to put these but I don't see why the owner of the parking lot wouldn't let you bolt them to the ground. Do it like a gun safe, you bolt them through the floor on the inside. The only way to get at the bolts is to have the box open. I would look into plastic ones and bolt them to the parking lot. They'd be easier to move (if the location turned out to be a bust), easy to clean, you'd never have to paint them because of rust, and they're probably cheaper store bought than you can build yourself.

Glad to hear you're not going to move into the mall at $1200/month. Sounded scary to me. Good luck!

[logansryche]

I would leave them in a well lit area and make sure on your "ABSOLUTLEY NO CRTs" sign that it says the area is monitored by security cameras and dumping is prohibited by law. (Even if there are no cameras...tell them there are cameras)

As stated above - 1/2" is probaly overkill. 1/8" might be a little light and dent easily when people throw computers in your bin. But at least you'd be able to move it if need be.

I don't know where you plan to put these but I don't see why the owner of the parking lot wouldn't let you bolt them to the ground. Do it like a gun safe, you bolt them through the floor on the inside. The only way to get at the bolts is to have the box open. I would look into plastic ones and bolt them to the parking lot. They'd be easier to move (if the location turned out to be a bust), easy to clean, you'd never have to paint them because of rust, and they're probably cheaper store bought than you can build yourself.

Glad to hear you're not going to move into the mall at $1200/month. Sounded scary to me. Good luck!

When thinking about it from a certain pov(even someone elses pov), it made sense. I hadn't even thought about using a storage locker for scraping but running a business from one is pretty popular apparently. Most of the bins i've been seeing aren't gapped enough to handle the width and height of a tower so i'm inclined to building one. I'll probably give usplastic a ring and see what their sheets go for and go off that.

I'd go for a square bin, personally. Circles are not an efficient shape. You could probably build one with some plywood and 2x3s at the Home Depot for not much money. I'd chain mine to a light pole, personally. It's not theft-proof, but it'll make it more theft resistant.

I'd thought about doing that, heck even 2x4s aren't that expensive. I'd still have to come up with material for a flap and a door.

I'm going to wait till it stops pouring before i go out and take dimensions of the avail space in the hhr, that way I know how much space I have to work with when delivering these onsite. My other issue now is who I would contact for placing them. I don't want to just put them in random parking lots only for them to be hauled off(or are parking lots considered public domain). I've also thought about adding a gps tracker(I priced them at $25/ea) in case the bins do take a walk, and some sort of device that'll tell me when the bin's full and needs emptying(email notice would be nice).

[DevinThaScrapper]

My yard had 1/2" bins they only weigh about 800#'s

[logansryche]

My yard had 1/2" bins they only weigh about 800#'s

Open tops?

[Mechanic688]

High Quality, Large Steel Donation Bins for Clothing, Books and Other Recycling

[logansryche]

Id seen those but not sure if i could get a full tower through the opening

[logansryche]

Morning everyone just an update or three on what i've been up to. Firstly, because of the winter season consigning electronics has dropped but will most likely pick back up again sometime after January 1st(so those who sent me stuff can either have their stuff returned or wait until I repost them in January). Secondly I went ahead and got scrap room membership(the full lifetime one) and created a buy thread for items I'm looking for not to mention linked it in my signature along with a snazzy new banner. The items I'm looking for purchasing are mostly non-scrap items. Dual and Quad core laptops for a VR project I'm working on, VG Consoles for another project i'm working on, Console Video Games I found a buyer for, and the coke/mountain dew codes for Listia. The only two listed for scrap would be the can tabs and alkaline batterys.

I've always been an avid Baseball Card collector and those I ask usually give them to me or send them to me as they really have no monetary value anymore but I figured I would buy them at a certain rate now so whoever has them doesn't feel like they gave away a stack or box of cardboard for nothing. Clean aluminum's been holding at $0.40/lb so far and I started a project back before I came to this board about collecting can tabs and eventually turning them in and using the money to take the wife back to Disneyworld(we went when she was first granted SSI and she'd never been before that).

I'm serious when I state that when this becomes a good thing I'll raise my buy rates. Right now each item is priced per pound based on what I can currently afford to buy and right now I would not be able to reimburse shipping. I suppose if I was shown how to go through and create shipping labels and get them sent off I could offer that however I'd still have to subtract that from the overall price which gives the same end result so I put a shipping weight restriction so shipping wouldn't cost a bunch(especially if sent flat rate). If this VR project becomes fruitful or my buyer buys enough games I could see my buy rates going up but i'm not in a position to do so right now.

In the meantime I've also been running an ad on Freecycle that i'm looking for DC/QC laptops and so far a lady from Fulton came down and gave me a HP DV2845SE for my VR project. The project requires alot of processing power and I figured that the best way to do it was using several laptops because of their low power drain as compared to a server or desktop computer. Each laptop acts as a server and the dual core laptops run one instance of the server while the quad core laptops run two. The project isn't secret or proprietary and am more then happy to share with those who ask about it as that's where my main thoughts have been since my birthday on October 14th.


Happy Thanksgiving everyone,
Matt

[matador]

I don't know what your project entails, but you may want to check into the AMD A-Series APUs. They're not too bad on power draw, and they make quad core ones (Maybe even six-core ones). Since it's a bit of a "dead-end" socket, the prices should fall when AMD releases their new socket. Just a thought if laptops are hard to come by....

[logansryche]

I don't know what your project entails, but you may want to check into the AMD A-Series APUs. They're not too bad on power draw, and they make quad core ones (Maybe even six-core ones). Since it's a bit of a "dead-end" socket, the prices should fall when AMD releases their new socket. Just a thought if laptops are hard to come by....

I'd thought about them and at one point was even going to go with a Pi as Banana Pi just released a quad-core version but their hardware and my software aren't compatible. Will most defiantly look into AMD APUs since my project's environment is windows based.

[matador]

AMD also had some integrated boards (Their version of the Intel Atom, basically). I believe that those could be had with a quad core too, but I don't have one in front of me. AMD will be coming out with a new socket pretty soon from what I understand. That should lower the value of the current CPUs (Both the FM socket A-Series ones and the Socket AM3 "regular" CPUs). I'd avoid the AM3s- the power draw is a little more, but it's not too bad.

[logansryche]

AMD also had some integrated boards (Their version of the Intel Atom, basically). I believe that those could be had with a quad core too, but I don't have one in front of me. AMD will be coming out with a new socket pretty soon from what I understand. That should lower the value of the current CPUs (Both the FM socket A-Series ones and the Socket AM3 "regular" CPUs). I'd avoid the AM3s- the power draw is a little more, but it's not too bad.

I'd heard something about that but wasn't sure since at the time it was being played off as hearsay(right around the time when AMD announced they had thought about creating an 8-core laptop). For me laptops solve 5 main issues: Space, Power Consumption, Specs, and Scalability.

Space - Each laptop sits about the height of a 1U server but are shorter length wise and width wise. This means if I built a temperature controlled cabinet, I can stack a good 5-600 laptops depending on how high I build the cabinet.

Power Consumption - True each laptop is roughly rated at 19v 2a however a stack of em still draw less power and makes the needle spin less then my brother-in-law's desktop and he's running a 450wt Wal-Mart Emachine.

Specs - The server software requires a min of 2 cores, a min of 2gb of memory, and a min of 50gb of hard drive space. For this reason I'm running each laptop that's already hooked up with Windows XP. More memory and hard drive space does boost the stability of the software having a quad-core lets me run 2 instances of the software instead of 1. The server software also ignores graphics processing as all of that is handled client side so a dual or quad-core laptop could have a crap onboard video card(hinting at intel extreme) and still be perfect for the project.

Scailability - Scailability is easier with laptops then with desktops or another server blade - most post 2008 laptops have some form of 802.11G or better and are mostly out of the box ready to go. With desktops I'd have to go buy a wireless NIC or stretch an ethernet cord from the tower to a hub and run another line from the hub to my Verizon box, creating alot of messy wires(laptop power cords are messy enough).

The only issue I'm slowly running into is lack of power outlets(there's only so many on a strip). I had thoughts of building a PSU that inputed 110v and outputed 19v 2a but that kind of defeated the point of using laptops and then had the idea of using one pack to power many but that doesn't work the way I thought it would either. Another thought I had was wraping the PSUs together to make the area cleaner, but wasn't sure if doing that would make the packs overheat. What i'm probably going to do is create a bank of outlets(probably the IFC ones) the laptops can plug into and worry about making the area cleaner later.

[logansryche]

Updated buy thread. Figured I'd keep my updates here since there's a thread already about it and updates on that thread would cloud space for feedback(I think the buy section rules are set up like this anyhow). I've decided to go ahead and give the prepaid shipping label idea a try and see how it goes however the price of shipping will come off the total payment(so if your payment would have been $50 and the label costed $25, you'll receive $25. Likewise if for some odd reason your total was going to be $10 and the label costed $10, you'd receive nothing). I've left the weight limit at 50lbs but did add the option to have your payment sent by money order for a dollar fee.

I don't expect anyone to go rush out and send me anything, but decided to give updates so everyone doesn't think I dropped off the face of the earth or something.

[logansryche]

Will be in the process of consolodating my classified ad into my buy ad as I've gone ahead and not only updated our buy prices but posted an area that talks about our consignment services. This also means that comments on consignment services will be posted there instead of the classified ad.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone,
Matt