The NY based hacker group named Ithacka has posted an interesting challenge. Buy a box of junk and build something with it following their guidelines. Document it and submit it for voting.  There are some rules that allow you to use a few pieces that don’t come from the box, but the list is short. They don’t specify what the prize is, but entries must be submitted by August 1st.

In a national competition for creativeness in children, junk bots have reigned supreme. Pictured above is a detail from one of [Vu Van Thankg]‘s junk bots. Created entirely from parts pulled from the trash, this thing has 11 motors which supposedly allow full arm and hand control. We know you’ll be upset at how little information there is, but the pictures alone show so much. Just look at the rig he put together for this arm. If that isn’t inspiring, we don’t know what is.

[via BoingBoing]

The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk is essentially a virtual swap meet. A mysterious USPS flatrate box arrives on your door step filled to the brim with random electronics. You remove some pieces that you find interesting or useful. Write about them. Add some items from your own collection, and then ship it off to a recipient you deem worthy. [John Park] was kind enough to send us the box code named Rangoon and here’s what we found inside:

Suprise! A bunch of electronics junk! There were old circuit boards and new unpopulated boards, a pocket phone dialer, a giant multimedia remote, coincells, random LEDs, wirewrap boards, a touchscreen toy, and a mini FM microphone amongst many other things. Most important was a small log book for suggesting recipients.

We pulled out some pin sockets, a light up fader with detents, a pager motor, and a sealed Dialight bag, which ended up being a four digit hexadecimal display.

Our contributions to the box were: some sockets, a microswitch, weights from a gaming mouse, a ShiftBrite module, controller board from a TRS-80 Model III floppy drive, a USB WiFi adapter, and a Kopin HMD board with adapter. You can see the progress of this box and others on the official wiki.