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[–] 73 points 5 months ago (4 children)

The coppers probably easy enough to get most of it. The gold will mosty be thin bits on the circuitry and you'd need extensive work to remove it and process into a sellable product.

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  • [–] 53 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    True, but if you had 1000 circuit boards, i'll bet you could find an interested buyer that knows how to do the complicated bits.

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago

    Most of them only take stuff for free. Unless you have a lot of high quality boards. I thought about doing it myself years ago but it wasn't worth the investment and time for me even with me getting free appliance circuitry from work.

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  • [–] 59 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    I thought, this couldn't be true, because surely, one of those cameras doesn't cost more than like $200. There's no official price list, but I'm finding numbers online of $2500 per year. This includes maintenance, footage hosting and cell service, which is likely the bulk of the cost. Either way, jeebus, that's a lot of money.

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  • [–] 61 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Government contracting is a grift with a long, long history. I bet if you travelled back in time to ancient Egypt, you'd find military leaders overcharging the pharaohs for security services.

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    This image is great but I find the quantity of elements present to be highly suspect

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago

    You mean there's more copper in them, right? Just, like, hypothetically if people needed money for their entertainment budget and had several of these spare in their neighborhood basement they could dismantle them and sell the metals?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    How can a simple doorbell camera have... let me convert from ye oldie measurements... almost a KILOGRAM of copper in it?!

    Does it have a big heatsink for some reason?

    Or is someone just trying to trick thieves into trying to steal them? Which is pointless, at best it would only work once, maybe.

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  • Flock Cameras are not for doorbells. They're sold to law enforcement and local government to conduct surveillance on citizens, often placing one at each entry point to a community so there's no way to enter or leave in a vehicle without the camera scanning your license plate and creating a record of your comings and goings.

    If you're not interested in the copper, smashing the camera and destroying the more expensive solar panel makes for a romantic date night, too!

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  • Those numbers are way too small. there's at least 25 kgs of copper in there

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