I know it’s taken me a long time to post this, but I received my box of migratory junk on May 10! I got box INTJ-7 which had been shipped out by a nice guy from San Diego. I don’t have a lot to say now (and no pictures) but I’d like to share some of what I got out of it. Perhaps my biggest find was right on top: a Hand Held Products IT4410 2D barcode scanner. On the product page I found the manual manual (pdf link) which explains all of its features.

It turns out that the scanner emulates a PS/2 keyboard and will read almost any 1D or 2D barcode symbology. After a few hijinks with a loose ribbon cable and flaky PS/2 support on my computer I got the scanner working perfectly. I was even able to change its configuration by scanning barcodes from the manual displayed on my LCD (though I don’t know if it will work with glossy screens — mine is matte).

I’m planning on putting up a more complete summary of what I’ve found, but here are a few other things that caught my eye:

• A solenoid-controlled proportional valve for small pneumatics or hydraulics.
• A bag of large rubber grommets, one of which I cut up to replace the feet on a table lamp.
• Three matched stepper motors.
• A worm-gearbox connected to a large motor with integrated optical encoder.
• A wide variety of IR LED/phototransistor gates.
• A pile of 1.8V, 2.5V and 3.3V voltage regulators.

Stay tuned for pictures and more details on what I’m taking and what I’m going to do with it.