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Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#121

Post by mindslight »

opless wrote: post #56
rezgi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise ThinkPads are amazing machines. They're very sturdy (although the X230 notoriously has a weak screw holder in the top left (or is it right?) corner that will almost always break and make that corner of the case a bit wobbly. Annoying but not critical. And the i7 top of the range version that comes with the 180GB Intel SSD... Well, the SSD is bad and can be thrown out. It has a bug in its firmware that was…

IPS upgrade? Tell me more!

Some of the x230 configurations shipped with IPS screens, so you can just obtain one of those (or a compatible replacement) and swap it in. The resolution is still 1366x768. Beware of sellers falsely claiming "IPS".

Alternatively, you can do a bit of soldering/modding and put in an aftermarket 1920x1080 panel. https://nitrocaster.me/store/x220-x230-fhd-mod-kit.html

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#122

Post by gatherhunterer »

jfitzpa22 wrote: post #33

I use a spare TV like a kiosk panel for the family calendar, weather, and various RSS feeds.

What software do you use for the kiosk? I have been thinking of doing this with Ubuntu Core using the Chromium snap and a custom website which it refreshes.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#123

Post by mjstone »

sprobertson wrote: post #114
mjstone wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hacked together an Android app specifically for the purpose, so it doesn't really answer the original question about generally available projects. (I haven't got round to releasing the code as it's rather bespoke, but could do if you're interested.)

I'd be interested in the general technique, "teach a man to listen for beeps..."

I FFT incoming sound buffers, and if the 2KHz band is the highest for a suitable number of consecutive frames, then I send the email and stop listening for a few minutes to avoid double notifications.

2KHz is the frequency of my machine's beep. Just triggering on overall noise level alone would notify me each time the machine goes into spin, but using the FFT allows it to be more discerning.

(I'll try to publish the code soon.)

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#125

Post by agentultra »

My stack of old laptops and computers is repurposed into a franken-cluster running various OpenStack services and testing applications on different platforms and performance profiles. Also handy for testing dweb applications and ideas.

Would be interesting to find a way to flash old dumbphones for something.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#126

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

hanniabu wrote: post #37
RunningDroid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way is to burn a CD/DVD live image that has your configs added and configure it to mount a mergefs(iirc) on top of the read-only /home so all writes go to /tmp/merge.

But past that, I don't see how you can do anything since installing programs would require storage.

Most live linux has support for saving stuff to the flash drive. It runs slowly but works.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#127

Post by timdaman »

I spend a lot of time in the backcountry trekking, hiking, snowshoeing, and canoeing.

Over the last couple years I have increasingly started using my iPhone for navigation using GaiaGPS and Avenza PDF Maps.

My old phone, though unpowered for day to day life still functions great for navigation. On long trips I’ll bring this second phone as a backup map/gps which is smaller and lighter than the equivalent paper maps and navigation tools.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#128

Post by shtack »

gatherhunterer wrote: post #113
shtack wrote: post #68

I 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.

I still use the iPhone SE as a daily driver and there is an active second-hand market for them. I understand that it's spare tech but this could be done by an SoC board that costs less than $50. The iPhone, even a small one, has an expensive touch screen. You could probably sell an iPhone SE for at least $110, enough for a couple of Raspberry Pi 4 4GB systems. That's a cool project but it is a puzzling use of hardwar…

So the app actually works in the background and is meant to serve web pages from your daily driver phone (ie. out of your pocket). This particular phone is plugged in just because it serves the example pages which get higher traffic and should have higher uptime.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#129

Post by diego898 »

gatherhunterer wrote: post #113
shtack wrote: post #68

I 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.

I still use the iPhone SE as a daily driver and there is an active second-hand market for them. I understand that it's spare tech but this could be done by an SoC board that costs less than $50. The iPhone, even a small one, has an expensive touch screen. You could probably sell an iPhone SE for at least $110, enough for a couple of Raspberry Pi 4 4GB systems. That's a cool project but it is a puzzling use of hardwar…

Could you say a bit more (provide some links) explaining this active second-hand market? I love my SE!
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