Fri May 26, 2017 3:43 pm
You don't say where you are in California (if you're near me, something might be worked out...my wife wishes I had *fewer* monitors around)....
Check with family and friends to see if any of them have an unused monitor laying about.
Check to local Freecycle program (if there is one).
Check with anyone you might know who works for a company that is replacing desktop systems and see if you can take a monitor off their hands (avoiding the recycling fee for them).
Haunt all of your local second hand shops. I've gotten 19" monitors for less than $10 that way, and staying under $30 is realy easy, once you find where the local used monitors wind up.
The one thing to check on any free/cheap monitor is: Does it have DVI or HDMI input? If not (that is, if it is VGA only), it's not worth getting for use with a Pi. If you carry a standard power cord with you, you can usually check to see that second hand monitor at least powers up. Add a Pi, PSU and video cable (HDMI or HDMI to DVI), then you can see if the Pi displays the normal boot information.
So the basic thing is to learn to recognize video connectors (VGA, DVI, HDMI) on sight and then scrounge. If you can't tell what the specs are on a given monitor, look it up on the web to get the technical details. If you have to ask about a specific monitor here, that's what we'll do, but best practice is to do your "homework" first.