We’ve been working long and hard in order to keep the stew stirring on all of your great DIY projects at home.  It seems everyone from weekend tinker’s to students and teachers want to make things move and we’ve decided to step it up a notch.  We have had some great educational kits brought to us by local companies, they use a great object based programming method and are built to be used with Lego, fischertechnik and Vex platforms.  We are also very excited to announce that after being fans and enthusiasts of the Open Hardware movement, we have finally begun stocking Arduino products in our store.

We feel that combining the relative newness of the open hardware and programming ethos with our diverse and unique spectrum of inventory can only help the cause.  In the future, you will also see our workshops covering topics like programming microcontrollers and fundamentals of electronics.  Below you’ll what we’ve got right now, and you can expect us to be filling out our selection with many good pieces of DIY kits soon enough…

RC2 Super Packs: Sensors, Wires and Board

Super Cricket PCB & Programmer

Arduino Nano w/ USB Cable

A common and most important question always confronts us when we are entrusted to process your old tech for recycling that might still contain old data.  Despite how it is verbalized it comes down to “Is my data safe?’” Anything from a cell phone or PDA to an old hard drive can have your data on them. Many times, individuals give us an entire computer system, knowing full and well that their data still exists on it. Making sure that everything is used for good purposes is a big responsibility that we take seriously, and since your old tech can see many uses beyond its intended function we need to be very diligent on how we protect your old data. Below is an outline of standard practices here at the Reuseum.

Phones and PDAs- When cleaning out old cell phones, it is always best to take out the SIM card if there is one. If contacts or apps are stored on your phone, make sure and erase all of them. If it is not obvious in your Tools or Settings to perform a factory reset, a quick Google search should reveal how to get it done. Phones are mainly used for educational projects in our facilities, the vibrating motors and displays are great to tinker with and phones we use are usually dismantled for science projects or robots.

Hard Drives- If a drive doesn’t have enough oomph to make it in this high capacity world, there are lots of goodies inside of it that make for excellent science projects. Typically with a torx screwdriver, you can fully dismantle a hard drive and get a very strong pair of rare earth magnets, and there are some shiny silicon discs that make awesome robot wheels. At this point the PCB and other materials are easily recycled.  Hard drives that fit into this profile can never physically be used as an information storage device again.

If a hard drive does have a volume of memory worth using for storage, there are several great options, the easiest of which is called Darik’s Boot and Nuke.  DBAN will basically wipe the drive clean of the entirety of its contents.

Beyond that, if you still want more security that your data will never be recovered, we’ll let you watch us take a couple whacks at it with a hammer before we put it in the recycling bin.

Cameras- This is simple, take out the memory card or delete its contents.  While having the extra memory might be a boon, your trip to Cabo or extensive archive of photos of your dog might not be the type of thing you want to share.

As stated above, all of these methods are used by us as a policy to ensure that when you support us and our efforts with your recycling, we maintain good stewardship in order to make it a universally positive action to recycle.

Happy Holidays everyone, have a safe and fun celebration. Below you will find our holiday hours and the days that we are open.

12/24 Closed for Christmas Eve

12/25 Closed for Christmas Day

12/26-31 Open regular hours

1/1/12 Closed for New Year’s Day