I connect my old phone to my speakers during parties as a kind of streaming device. It's easy to control them from my main phone
Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
41–50 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#42I made a Myst linking book like this https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/myst-linking-book but it was way easier to do with a smartphone.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#43They mostly collect dust as backup phones. But it feels better as insurance than selling them away for a couple hundred bucks a pop. Maybe I'll put the Hue app on one so I have spare remote controls for lights. It would be nice if I could use an old iPhone as a hub for HomeKit, but I think it only supports iPads.
Yep only iPads and AppleTVs
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#441. The security camera to watch your pets while you're away too! I like the Dog Monitor iOS app
2. Shower music player
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#45Old iPhones:
1) Make excellent phones.
2) Make great music players.
3) Make great backup phones to use when hiking, biking, running, etc.
4) Make great GPS devices for older cars (Some maps apps let you download maps to be used offline).
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#46I pass them down to my kids as iPod Touches. Then I mostly forget about the previous generation. I'm hesitant to replace their iPhone 6's with our iPhone 7's. It doesn't feel like an upgrade. Our 7's have had issues since the beginning, and the headphone jack is very valuable to the kids.
I'm going the opposite way, I'm trying to get rid of the 6s. I've had nothing but bad luck with touch disease and NAND solder joints breaking over and over.
The whole early build of the 6 and 6+ is cursed. I hope Apple loses that class action lawsuit in a super-bad way.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#47Old smartphones are good as security cameras: they have a nice camera and wi-fi of course, but also could be much better than traditional security cams as they also can have 3G/4G networking and a battery, in case power/internet is cut for example. They could also record or play sounds, like an alarm. I have an iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 doing that. However, it's not easy to find an app for such a use, I'm planning to ope…
> Old smartphones are good as security cameras They don't get updates and are not secure to be used as network connected security cameras.
iPhones are not that bad at security.
Anyways, always put any device behind a router/firewall (at least when on wi-fi).
Also, prefer an app that pushes (to a remote server, ...), instead of an app that opens ports.
And don't run other apps on the device.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#48I have an old iPad2 and I'm honestly amazed at how bricked it is at this point just from the passage of time.
Recently I turned it on after a long while, asking myself this post's exact question.
I went into the browser, but I got SSL errors accessing Google, Apple, etc. Okay...
Then I went to the settings app to see if there are updates, but the device is obviously unsupported at this point.
Finally I went to the App Store to try and install some picture frame app or something, but that was stupid of me since I already knew Apple certs were no longer valid in my obsolete OS.
Bottom line: It's trash with a touch screen. Galaxies are much better in that aspect. Rooting them provides a world of possibilities.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#49Old smartphones are good as security cameras: they have a nice camera and wi-fi of course, but also could be much better than traditional security cams as they also can have 3G/4G networking and a battery, in case power/internet is cut for example. They could also record or play sounds, like an alarm. I have an iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 doing that. However, it's not easy to find an app for such a use, I'm planning to ope…
What's the best software to turn an old iPhone (or Android phone?) into a security camera? The concept does seem good, they certainly have more capable hardware and cost less than a lot of network attached cameras.
There are a few apps on the App Store: iPCamera for example (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ipcamera-high-end-network-ca...), it provides an MJPEG stream that you can process with a camera monitoring software like ZoneMinder.
There are also a few open-source projects with this kind feature: StreamIt for example (https://github.com/twittemb/StreamIt), which also provides an MJPEG stream.
This would be the most basic stuff.
MJPEG is however not the most efficient (~200Kb/s networking). There are also some "video" streaming projects like https://github.com/shogo4405/HaishinKit.swift or https://github.com/wlanjie/lf.swift, which provide MP4/RTMP/HLS streams and could be processed with a camera monitoring software like Shinobi (https://shinobi.video).
I hope this helps!
Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
#50I mostly only get new ones when there are serious issues with the old one, so generally they just get recycled. My first, a 3GS, did last many years with a white noise app as a overqualified noise machine in the kids' room but even it is finally dead. One of my wife's was still in good condition at one point and we did resell it.