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.
I have to agree with James’ suggestion - I think it would be pretty fun if a Mystery Box (or even just a certain type of Mystery Box) contained three identical parts with different failures! For instance, one webcam has faulty microphones, whereas the other two have sensor failures. Simple repair to try: transplant microphones from the sensor-failed cameras to the microphones-failed camera, and, you get two attempts at it. Non-economical for FrmW to do because of multiple large factors, but a fun journey for a hacker with a hot air gun!
It does take more effort than “just three random parts”, but it would be doable with a little wit. Call that a Try-And-Fix box, I guess =D
Another suggestion.
As these are essentially parts that don’t work, I don’t think we have to have a courier like fedex deliver them.
I am sure people would be happy with the an option for a $0.99 postage cost one gets from various Chinese vendors on ebay, with the parts turning up perhaps 30 days later. A sort of “do you feel lucky” postage, where it might never arrive, but its cheap.
Shipping from China is cheaper as costs are subsidized. As it’s coming from the U.S., it’s not going to work. The only way to ship something for that cheap is to use stamps which have size and weight limits in some cases.
This is a great perspective @James3. I agree that getting three random pieces of non-viable electronics is unlikely to move even the dial indicator on e-waste. It feels more like something a hoarder collector would do just because. Getting three matching parts offers much greater viability of repairing them. I can think of several reasons why:
You can cross-check the same signals on different parts, getting a better idea of baseline and abnormal behavior.
You have spare parts on hand, for sure for sure.
You are able to get into a bit of a flow. Figure out the flaw on one part? The others could well be suffering the exact same issue. Your up-front cost (troubleshooting) is now going, say, three times as far (if all three parts are repairable).
Including schematics is a great idea, as well. Afaik, the only proprietary blobs related to the WiFi and BT modems and bootloaders/kernal drivers for the CPU and GPU. So quite a lot of parts could be fully open-sourced. They could also be semi-open-sourced, where recipients of the mystery boxes get the source.
@Destroya, are there specific arguments for batch-fixing parts over bespoke repairs that @James3 made that you don’t see the validity of, or did you really intend to dismiss the entire idea out of hand?
The mystery element comes from the three-pack being a random part (in multiples of three) - easy enough to grok. Efficiencies of scale are well-known to the Framework team, as well.
I ordered and received two of the large mystery boxes. If they are non-functioning, they look amazing. I’m new to the framework community, but look forward to seeing if these components are functional. I received in each box, a display, a mainboard, a lid, and an input panel (keyboard assembly). Since they looked so good, I went ahead and ordered a bottom to see if I could build a framework 13. If anyone’s interested, I’ll let you know how it goes.
-Joe
I’m curious how functional your display is. I created another thread on the forums discussing parts received in mystery boxes that I got, but the display seemed to be the only thing totally screwed in my mystery box?
First - WOW! I am so impressed by the fit and great feel the laptop has. Got the base today and hooked most everything up. The display I have low expectations for. The lid has an additional connection that the display does not have, a smaller ribbon connector on the top. I don’t get to test until tommorrow. I only had ddr5 ram, so I had to order a couple 8G sticks of ddr4 for this mainboard. Maybe I don’t have to order a new display. But if I do, it’s still worth it, as I’m so impressed with how it goes together.
For me it was community outreach. I was not on the market for a whole new laptop, and this was a brilliant idea to get people in a similar situation involved with Framework.