Looking for hackable electronics your next hackathon meeting?

Hey dumpster-diving electronics hacking people!

(image borrowed from the ThinkGeek link, below)

I wish I had the time to be a hardware mod’er / tinkerer / hacker … I’ve got enough old junk around my house to do it, but no time to spend on it. I know there are some of you out there, though, who love to do it and have the time. So, I thought I would spread the word about ThinkGeek’s latest idea:

From http://thinkgeek.com/blog/2011/03/take-these-broken-things.html

We have a problem. And it’s growing at a rate proportional to our return pile.

We can’t, in good conscience, resell damaged electronics. And we can’t donate them to charity–the saddest kid in the world is one with a handheld video game that won’t turn on. Garbage, then? Not good for the environment.

Luckily for us, there’s an entire class of scavengers out there ready to pick the bones of our helicopters, keyboards, and interactive t-shirts: hackers, makers, and crafty techy types.

Whether it’s in a school’s technology lab, or a FIRST Robotics team, or your neighborhood hackerspace, we’re betting somebody out there would enjoy getting a box of broken stuff from us every couple of months–and then use the parts and pieces for good, not evil.

While we can’t promise anything right now, we’re very seriously considering setting up such a subscription and we’re ready to gather contact information from those who are interested. Sign up below and we’ll see where this goes!

This looks like an awesome idea. Props to think geek for this, on many levels: recycling, saving the environment (instead of throwing things out), not being jerks and re-selling broken stuff, and supporting the hardware-hacker community!