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Ding and Dent Production Builds - DEV
It's that time of year when we sell off our production scrap. These boards do not work, but they make for great practice, and if you're good with the tools, you might even salvage some serious dough. These boards are a great way to encourage hot-air rework, scoring usable parts, and not having to fret if the rework goes poorly.
The production scrap is divided up into the applicable store front category. It's a surprise! You might get any failed product within that category. This product is for an item from the Development Tools Category.
Defects range from incorrect designs, PCB defects, incorrectly assembled boards, bad parts, bad soldering, blemishes, or anything that would make the SparkFun product not able to be sold on our store front.
Units come in single pieces and there in no guarantee as to what you will be receiving, but we can guarantee that you will not receive a blank PCB!
**We cannot accept requests, returns, exchanges, provide documentation, or provide support on any aspect of these boards. **
We hope you can give a second life to some of these parts!
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Wow, back in stock
What time of year are these in stock?
back in stock
Talking from what it said in the description
it's not really any particular time of the year, just when they have enough that either don't work or have some issue that they don't feel like fixing. They generally come in stock at random times during the year, and if you really want to buy one, set up an auto-notification, and try to get lucky when you go to check out. There are probable 10 times the amount of people that want to buy a few than there are that come in stock.
Could we get a more up-to-date set of pictures?
Wow! This sounds so interesting... Will I be able to fix them and get them working somehow? Or are they tooo bad??
And in 2nd last para: We cannot 'accept'....
It really is luck of the draw. I got a 6DOF v4 main board and sensor board that had some badly routed traces. A couple green wire fixes and both boards were fully functional
Update on the Digital Sandbox I received. I could not see anything obviously wrong with same so I downloaded the software and plugged it in to my computer. Obviously there is some kind of major short circuit involved as the DS and the USB cable got warm so that item is on the back burner until I can figure out what is going on. Update on the RedBoard. When I plug it into the computer, the RX led blinks and that's all. The software says cannot sync the board. When I push the reset button, the blue pin 13 led blinks twice. Upon closer inspection, the board is missing the ON led and a 3 lead item near the RX led. I will comment when I make more progess.
I ordered 2 of these when they were in stock last month and I received a Red Board (with a poorly soldered barrel jack) and a Digital Sandbox V1. When I have some free time in about a month's time, I'll investigate what is wrong with them and see if they will work or not.
Got a Mega Pro 3.3v for $5! It had two solder bridges on the ATMEGA2560 pins - easily fixed. It took a bit to figure out I needed a specific bootloader for the 8mhz clock, but once burned, it worked perfectly.
Thanks, Sparkfun!
When they say gamble, how much of a gamble is it? How many of the boards that people get are (relatively) good and work (with a reasonable amount of time spent on it)?
It's a gamble, but a good one. I ordered a bunch of ding and dent items recently, and so far I have salvaged/assembled/repaired a Mega Pro, a CAN-BUS shield, two Redboards, a couple Makey Makeys, a Lilypad, and several other items. I have a whole bag of CC3000, BLE, and misc boards still to sift through. In the past I have salvaged GPS modules, Bluetooth and Wifi boards, etc. Just be advised, you will need to have good SMD soldering skills to make most repairs, and you will probably need to order some small parts online. But it's well worth the time and effort.
It depends. Sometimes we get a bad PCB (bad trace, bad silk, etc.) and notice after building some up. Once in a while we scrap an old revision when the new one comes out. More often than not the board gets built up, and fails our testing procedure. We do try to fix these, but sometimes we can't do so neatly, or it would take more time to fix than its worth for us. In other words if its populated and we can't sell it, it goes here, there are enough reasons why and all of them are fairly random. So, yes its a gamble... As for the date of stock, we were out of stock of this category at the beginning of September, so everything in there is less than a month old.
Well a few of these are coming my way then. It will be interesting to see what I get (If i get an order in anyway). It will be a good project for my systems engineering class, trying to get one of these working, I might even get a good mark for it :)
well it seems like this section hasn't been looked at in ooh... at least a year...
In that case, how old are the boards that are in stock. I dont want to be buying a 5 year old board ;)
I got a Pro Micro 5V. The only problem with it was a solder bridge on the regulator, which was shorting ground and USB power. A quick solder wicking job, and all I have left to do is install the bootloader. Basically, I got a Pro Micro for 75% off.
THEY'RE IN STOCK AGAIN YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!
There 'is' no guarantee
you're right--there is no guarentee
Bought some of these and some from the wireless category for grins and giggles, and ended up with a couple of IOIO boards and an Arduino Pro (among other things). Half the fun is opening the box and figuring out what you got (kind of like Christmas morning). If even one or two of these ends up salvageable it will have been more than worth the investment.
just got my package, recieved a picoboard and an Spartan 3E breakout and development board. Niether works right out of the box, duh, that is what 5$ is worth. Would like some help to find out what to look for in the picoboard, why did it fail??, the Spartan, well seems like the bad solder in the power supply. Even if i could get the power supply working i wouldn't even know what to do. Fun to play with though for a small cost. Thanks Sparkfun anyways. If you could give me a hint that would help. The Rx/Tx flickers when plugged in using usb but then nothing else. did download the software but no go,updated drivers too. Any help would be greatful. Again, for 5$ what the heck do you expect, they have the diclaimer, duh.... Did sparkfun determine why most boards were not acceptable would be helpful.. Thanks for reply in advance. Seems like a well built board though, solid and rugged, only if it had worked!! Darn.. Woow is me..
Well, needless to say that I am very happy with my Picoboard now. I should have paid enough attention to the software required for it to work. It works without any modification or trouble shooting. Had to download the scratch software instead. I had my 11year old son take it for a spin and he absolutely loves it. He did one of the tutorials and started modifing it to do other things. I must say "THANKYOU" sparkfun. For the Spartan 3E, I am still working on that and have determined that I first need to resolder the power plug onto the board. I have a good feeling that will be the only problem for this board too. It might just be too powerful for me right now, but I am up to the challenge. Again, Thanks Spakfun, can't wait for my next package. Yeah is me..
Any way we'll get some more boards up sometime?
back in stock
So one gets one board for $5?
Yes. They're sold in single pieces, so one board for $5.