If you have an old router with USB 2.0 ports lying around it's fairly straightforward to install OpenWRT and Zerotier and make a VPN with a private cloud attached if you mount a HDD, and as long as your file transfer requirements aren't too intense. Have one running on my LAN and it works well for FTP, SMB shares for backup, and normal VPN stuff. Plus, it doesn't consume much power as it's MIPS chipset.
Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
101–110 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#102I turned a Surface 3 (non-pro) into a wall clock that displays the current weather.
I find a window a very effective way to monitor the weather.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#103I use an old Android smartphone as a replacement wifi antenna for the notebook I use plugged to my 65 inch TV. It's my main workstation, and is a very good machine, but for some reason there's a short circuit on the motherboard and the wifi antenna does not work. This same old phone is also used as a security camera so I can see my pets remotely when I'm traveling. I use the app Alfred to do that, and it works very well.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#104My laptop broke at the hinge; now I have two parts. I wanted to convert the screen into a touchscreen for a while now. Not sure what I am going to do with that, tho. Maybe hook it to a Raspi?
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#105Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
That looks sweet - I did a small search on EBay, and - dang - they are expensive. The only two I could find where around 150€ each.
€150 is expensive? From what I remember of that thread a few weeks back, everybody on HN is pulling down $400k + 250k options.
The people that comment on those threads are probably by definition the ones in the highest salary brackets.
I'm fairly certain you meant your comment in jest, but figured it was worth pointing out.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you any info about how you regenerated the battery?
I sent it to guys that regenerate laptop batteries, but next time I will do it on my own because you basically replace the cells, weld them together and its done - here [1] you can find detailed guide for Libretto. [1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:frP4SG... (from cache as it doesn't seem to work right now)
When you said regenerate I thought you were doing some prices on the existing cells, rather than just replacing them. Thanks for your reply.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#108I have an old iPhone SE plugged in and running a simple web server via (disclosure: my app) http://pocketweb.io The two sample pages seen there are hosted from this phone. Edit: There's an Android version available as well.
Any alternative for Android? Edit: How is this working? I'm behind double NAT and other http servers do not work.
It's not a server in the true sense of the word. We piggyback on push notifications (proxied through our backend) to respond to requests. So really your phone's polling for requests, but it's a poll that it's already doing for push notifications.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#109I run https://motion-project.github.io/index.html on a DELL D400 (I think, it's Core 2 ULV), uploads picture to Gdrive. I set it up when leaving for long vacations. I used to run a 24/7 server (bittorrent, HTTP) on a fanless PC originally built for cash desks. Got it very cheap, ran several years till the Debian repo actually disappeared!! Consumption was 19W with HDD. It was replaced with a RaspPi and a SSD. BTW alm…
I just realized my older daughter recently received a trusty Nexus S (the one with a curved screen) as a media player. In airplane mode and a number of apps disabled, battery life is decent. After some initial complaining, she adopted it :)
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#110I have my old Galaxy S1 sitting in my cellar listening to the beeps from my washing machine. It sends me an email when the wash finishes. (I can't hear the beeps from upstairs.)
Hah! I did the same with an iPad. It loops me singing “the wash is done” instead of an email.