# Trash find



## tuck (Oct 27, 2007)

So my wife loves to go around the neighborhood on heavy trash day and see what she can find. She did find a discarded 32" LCD TV that does not work at all. I've decided before I throw it out ourselves to ask the haunting community if there is anything worth saving out of this thing for prop use. I'm already going to take the speakers out for a prop but wasn't sure if there was any other invaluable item I did not know about.


----------



## Erebus (Jul 28, 2009)

Before you tear it apart, look at all of the little capacitors, the one that looks like a cylinder standing up. My dad found a LCD on the street, took it apart and noticed that one of those were blown. He replaced it and it worked fine after that. He ended up giving it to his mom though.


----------



## tuck (Oct 27, 2007)

I looked through the circuitry that I could see and did not see anything that looked fried or burnt. I have a couple of panels to take off and see what else I can see. thanks for the advice.


----------



## The Bloodshed Brothers (Jan 25, 2009)

depending on what your haunt is like you could use all the circuitry for eye candy on a prop. A user on here by the name of Warrant2000used old cell phone and computer pieces on a limb re animator prop. they didnt do anything except make it look more technical..like there was alot goin on in the prop and it was putt together by some sort of mad scientist


----------



## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

Watch out for those caps that Erebus mentioned. Some of them may still be carrying a charge and could do you some damage. TV repair guys have tools for discharging capacitors so they don't get shocked.


----------



## HomeyDaClown (Oct 3, 2009)

I wouldn't worry too much about charged caps in an LCD TV, most everything in there is low voltage, not like the old TVs that had caps in the horizontal power section and could knock you on your butt. Besides, that takes all the fun out of the adventure!

You might be able to salvage the backlight (flexible lighted panel behind the actuall screen) to make some interesting lighting effects. I placed one behind a painting of a haunted house with clouds and cut lines to look like lightning. wired it to a cheap lightning controller. When someone approches the painting they trigger thunder sounds and the backlight flickers on/off.


----------



## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

A lot would depend on how 'dead' it is. There were a rash of capacitor failures several years ago. Seemed like it was usually the driver board for the fluorescent tube backlights. Sometimes the TV would flicker on for a moment only to go dark. These caps don't necessarily look 'blown' or 'burnt' though the ends might be popped out a bit. But when they are bad, they stop the backlight from working. One quick test is to shine a flashlight very close to the screen and see if you still see a hint of the picture. If so, then something in the backlight is bad. Conversely, if you turn the TV on in a dark room and the screen lights up, but the LCD stays off or 'black' that might indicate something with the picture side. I've brought a few LCD's 'back from the dead' with a capacitor replacement, or a few other minor components.

As far as 'haunt worthy' components. I don't know if there is much salvageable in there. Most everything is finely tuned to work as a system. With much work, you might be able to get the backlights to work, but then all you have are a couple of white fluorescent tubes. There might be a couple of small, quiet fans. The video circuit might work, but it's not of much use without the backlight - or at least something home made to shine through the LCD.


----------



## tuck (Oct 27, 2007)

Thanks for the advice everybody...If nothing else I can just use the frame and possibly stretch a scrim across it and have a skull push through.


----------



## fritz42_male (May 5, 2009)

tuck said:


> Thanks for the advice everybody...If nothing else I can just use the frame and possibly stretch a scrim across it and have a skull push through.


Just a thought but if there is no power at all (even standby light) then it's probably just a PSU failure. Depending on whether internal, external or whatever it might still be possible to fix it. Do you have a make/model?


----------

