After looking into how much those barcode scanner modules cost I realized that this HackerBox was an amazing value. As usual!
https://www.arrow.com/en/products/1203/adafruit-industries
https://www.amazon.com/Waveshare-Barcode-Scanner-Directly-Computer/dp/B07P3GD3XV
Box 58 was very "light" because the scanner and electronics were so tiny. I think that made me think there wasn't much in the box. Until I looked into it. Sometimes electronics are tiny. That's progress right?
I definitely love some HackerBoxes more than some others, but I always seem to learn several new things and have a lot of fun. The variety is pretty cool and they are one of my favorite parts of the month!
and to tack on, it worked with the new chips, but was still noisy as hell.
I'm just going to pull the parts and rebuild it using this instructable on some perf-board. Grab some dual channel audio taper potentiometers for the volume.
https://www.amazon.com/CUBES-Energy-Assorted-Coffee-Flavors/dp/B01BSZV3OC
No joke i bought this and sorta forgot they were coffee and snacked on them like gummies for a day. i ended up staying up all night and then only going to bed the next night.