FW announced that they would do “mystery box” that consists of:
“containing a random assortment of returned parts and modules. We can’t guarantee any kind of functionality of these items, so we’ve priced them ultra low for DIYers and tinkerers to play with. Every box contains at least three items. Note that these don’t come with a warranty and are non-returnable, so only get it if you want random scrap to play with!”
I am not so sure that this is a green, planet friendly approach.
If there is a part beyond economical repair, it will probably be put in this “mystery box”.
Now, while these parts might be “beyond economical repair” from a repair shop perspective. Individuals might wish to have a go repairing them just for fun.
But, a normal approach to this would be, get hold of 2 devices that don’t work, and hope you can use one as a donor board to repair the other one.
So, I think it would be better and more green, planet friendly, if the “mystery box” was a mystery box of a particular part. e.g. 3 camera modules, 3 displays, 3 main-boards (all of the same type).
Then at least one then has a chance to repair them if one wishes.
I guess the final great thing might be the pcb schematics for the items.
FW have not release detailed, fill schematics for anything yet (to the general public), but maybe they could for some of the older boards. i.e. a schematic for the Intel 11th gen FW13 main-board?
Can anyone think of what the use case is for the mystery boxes as they are? Won’t they just all end up in e-waste.
How useful can they really be, unless one is going to try and repair them or at least use their parts for something else?
I would disagree as it diverts potentially non-functional electronics from being immediately scrapped/recycled and provides the opportunity for someone to find a use for it. Recycling electronics is not always feasible and even if it is, it has its downsides such as high energetic/material costs. It’s even worse if it reaches landfills where it can leech toxic metals into the environment.
Some people might want a diversity of components to try and tinker with. This is the first time that Framework has done this so this is something that they can consider in the future (if they decide to do it again). Besides, depending on what components you receive, there might be value outside of just the PCB (e.g. the housing of the component). A cool project I’ve seen is using broken Framework parts to create framed teardown art. Additionally, Framework may be trying to allow a wider range of people to get different components. If all the mainboards were grouped together, I’m fairly certain it would sell out while the other stuff would remain. And doing it that way would be mean fewer individuals would have the opportunity to get a mainboard.
This is likely not up to Framework. They do have partners and some info is confidential. The partial schematics are a big step forward (not aware of any laptop manufacturer that openly publishes such information).
Well, before sending out the mystery boxes, those items were beyond economical repair so they would have been disposed of.
With the “mystery box” one is posting the items and then the receiver will probably not find them useful after all and will then throw the out. Result extra postage and disposed of. Less green.
If the receiver had some idea as to what is there, they could have some way maybe making it useful to them and maybe repair it and therefore not wish to dispose of it, thus more green.
I guess I am trying to say that “mystery” results in more waste and thus less green. Ebay.com has classifications for stuff they sell.
New, Uses but works, Reconditioned so works, Broken or parts only.
FW already have “Reconditioned” items for sale, I guess if FW added the “Broken or parts only” sales category, it might be greener.
I would argue that as someone who wants to learn how to tinker with these things more, these offer a fantastic opportunity for me.
They offer products that likely wouldn’t have been too used otherwise (I’m assuming?), where I can learn to tinker around with them in a low stakes situation where if I screw them up it’s no big deal, and they potentially allow me to apply them to my own laptop or other parts of the framework ecosystem/applications cheaply. The mystery box component means it’s kinda fun that I don’t know what I’m getting as well.
I’m honestly just sad I missed out on the large box/mainboard inclusion as that would have been really fun to screw around with.
A perfect example could have been that I’m not confident about my soldering to try fixing the rtc battery issue on my laptop, but an extra mainboard where I could potentially work on it would have been amazing.
These “scraps” can become the foundation of new modules for Frameworks Laptops. For example, many people have been asking for empty Expansion Card cases for development, so Framework added an Expansion Card Shell pack to their Marketplace. The same goes for input modules, the Expansion Bay and maybe new mainboard cases resulting in the Mystery Box.
Sadly, those Mystery Boxes are available in NA only, otherwise I’d have added one to my recent order of the Dual M.2 Adapter…
Just to be clear, you believe that it won’t be planet friendly based on this assumption. Do you think the buyers will expect fully functional parts from the mystery boxes? Or they will just buy and will get rid of them because they don’t need these parts.
again, this wouldn’t be “mystery” then, you can always buy second hand broken/not functional specific parts from eBay or from the community market.
That being said, if you think that mystery box description is not clear, that’s something else.
I think that it has the possibility to make the devices more repairable if they can be put into the right hands. In the listing it says that the large mystery boxes are coming with mainboards that may not be fully functional. Even if they aren’t functional that is a board that has donor components to fix boards that do break over time. I am not skilled in diagnosing board-level repairs or microsoldering but that is a pretty cheap way for the people that need donor boards to do repairs to get them.