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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?

#251

Post by ohadpr »

wpietri wrote: post #208
newhouseb wrote: post #175

In an attempt to be more present with one another away from our phooes, my partner and I have (ironically) started using old phones as single-app devices. For example: we have a "spotiphone" which is an old iPhone with a shattered camera that has only Spotify installed that we use in our bedroom to control music/podcasts. Similar thing for where my partner meditates (but it's an old iPod touch). Our real phones are u…

Absolutely. I use an old phone specifically for all social media apps. It doesn't have my contacts or other data on it, so they can't steal that. When I want to be distracted by Twitter, I have to find it and turn it on explicitly. Which is enough of a barrier that I do it a lot less.

Another way to achieve this is to avoid the native apps for Twitter/FB/etc and just use the mobile websites. No access to camera/photos/contacts/location/etc.

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

#252

Post by exadeci »

fragmede wrote: post #131
2fast4you wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 2012 MacBook Pro is in great condition and probably would’ve stayed that way for awhile, but sluggishness was just becoming too common. Especially when I’m off mains, running an IDE, a browser, and occasionally compiling

I've a 2012 MacBook Pro as well, and Chrome is unusably slow on it (OS X). Safari runs okay. Mine has 4 GiB of ram, and a spinning disk. The combination means it's hitting swap constantly, and hitting swap thrashes the disk on top of it. When I get the money to upgrade the ram to 16 GiB and upgrade to an SSD I'm hopeful it's be more usable, but for now it runs a terminal well enough.

I have a mid 2012, I upgraded the ram to 10GB 4 years ago and replaced both the hdd and the cd reader by 2 ssd.

This things flies for most tasks, I only see it slow down when I try compiling Android apps.

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

#254

Post by vonseel »

mjstone wrote: post #35

I 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.)

That’s so simple and brilliant; if I kept any old phones I’d love to build a little device like that. I’ve thought about similar stuff with raspberry pis or the other tiny hacker platform (can’t remember the name right now!) but these things cost more to figure out than its worth to me right now.

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

#255

Post by kikokikokiko »

marcinzelent wrote: post #219
kikokikokiko wrote: post #103

I 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 w…

How do you share the network connection from the Android phone to the laptop?

I just go to Android settings and enable tethering over usb. Unfortunately, this creates another step every time I turn on the laptop, but I'm actually used to do it already. This "smartphone antenna" is being used for two years now.

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

#256

Post by kikokikokiko »

foxhop wrote: post #111
kikokikokiko wrote: post #103

I 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 w…

So are you using the phone as a "hot spot" for the machine plugged into the 65 inch TV?

It's just sharing the connection it gets from my wifi router over USB to my laptop. Since my laptop's wifi antenna does not work, I have to give it access to the internet through USB tethering.

My laptop is always plugged to my TV via HDMI. It's my multimedia center, I use PopCorn Time every day on it. It has a bluetooth keyboard/mouse set.

It's also my main workstation, I develop Android apps on my spare time at home, and nowadays I'm getting more money from the apps than from my 9to5 corporate job, so this side gig is becoming more and more of a main gig.

I love this setup, it's better than ANY smart tv OS, there's simply no replacement to a full-fledged Linux OS on your big screen TV and a real, full sized keyboard and mouse. And to code sitting on a huge armchair is pretty nice too.

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

#257

Post by xwolf »

I took out my old OnePlus phone and I've built my own baby monitor app. We use it with our 5mo and it's been super useful for us so I polished it and a few days ago released it in Play Store so other parents can try it.

The app has some cool and unique features:

    - pink noise to help our baby fall asleep faster and sleep longer
    - works in the background
    - auto-reconnect
    - low baby monitor battery warning
If someone is interested, the app is in the play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zzzbabymon...

Initially, there are 4 hours of free monitoring time, but as the app is new I'm happy to give promo codes with extra time. Just drop me a message (contact info is the app) and I'll send you one.

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

#258

Post by Symbiote »

speleding wrote: post #231
Symbiote wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what age do you disable the tracking? My parents' tracking of me in the 1990s was awful enough. I dread to think what they have set up I were 12 years old today.

That discussion has not come up yet. The kids are old enough to be able to switch it off themselves on their phone if they wanted to but so far they seem comfortable with it. It works both ways: they can see at any moment in time where their parents are, which may be a soothing idea. With one parent travelling a lot for business the screen in the kitchen teaches them a bit about geography too. (What country is mummy…

I felt "watched" from age 11 or so, once I saw other children had freedoms I didn't, like stopping by the Warhammer shop on the way home from school.

I worked around some of them — I joined an after school club for a while, but rarely attended which gave me about 45 minutes to wander around the city. One friend's parents thought mine were ridiculous, and would lie for me if I'd said I was at their house but wasn't.

It would have been a lot more difficult with an electronic tracker.

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

#259

Post by l8rlump »

biztos wrote: post #143
diego898 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know how active it is now, but last summer I was trying to decide whether to upgrade as I love my SE but it was starting to feel slow (thanks Apple!). Back then, eBay has lots and lots of "new" ones at every spec level, and some foreign shops were still selling new-in-box ones at the lower spec levels. I ended up buying an 8, by the way, and I like it much much less than I liked my SE, though it is a lot fast…

If you touch twice on the home button, the contents of the screen move down to alleviate this.

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

#260

Post by ornornor »

jerome-jh wrote: post #53

I 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…

> BTW almost all the laptops at home have been bought used (usually in Germany where offer is plenty).

Do you know a company online that sells these second hand laptops? Or do you buy from classifieds, individual to individual?

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