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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?

#131

Post by fragmede »

2fast4you wrote: post #12
swiley wrote: post #5

I don’t know why everyone acts like old laptops aren’t usable, my 2011 MacBook Pro has no HD (the cable died again and I’m not replacing it this time) and it runs from ram just fine (with Linux of course, not OSX) If you’re not silly you really don’t need much computing power, even then newer laptops aren’t big improvements so if your old one still works I don’t see why you would replace it.

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.

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

#133

Post by lqet »

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.)

My Samsung Galaxy S turns 10 this year. It runs the latest compatible version of Cyanogenmod. Despite the obvious security drawbacks, I am still using it as my day-to-day smartphone for these reasons:

* These things are seemingly indestructible. In 10 years, the only problems I had was a deteriorating battery (which I replaced once) and a broken back cover (which I replaced by a 2,99 EUR one from eBay). The screen is still unbroken, fully working, and without scratches

* They are small, handy, and slim (thinner than many modern smartphones)

* Browsing is so slow that I cannot do anything except checking Hackernews and reading the local news. So it is definitely not a procrastination tool for me

* The camera still works great, and makes good pictures

* I don't care about security holes. I have no important passwords stored on the phone, I don't use it to check my mail (for the reason above). The only password stored is the ical service password on my private server which is used to update the calendar app. I couldn't care less if anyone had this password, my calendar is really not interesting.

* Osmand (for OpenStreetMap) and the national route planning app for public transit still work

So basically, I have an extremely reliable pocket machine which can be used as a telephone, to send SMS, to do route planning, to check the news, to check my calendar, to provide a Wifi access point for my laptop and which is also a world wide map. I don't need anything else, so why replace it? During these 10 years, I saw my then-girlfriend and now-wife go through 5 new smartphones, which regularly broke. I used it to make pictures of all our vacations, our engagement, our wedding and our child as a new-born. It has accumulated an amount of experience-patina which is very rare for physical things these days, so I also cling to it out of sheer nostalgia.

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

#134

Post by pb7 »

theodric wrote: post #70
MrGilbert wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

Which thread?

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

#135

Post by naikrovek »

theodric wrote: post #70
MrGilbert wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

definitely not everyone.

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

#137

Post by Accujack »

reeddavid wrote: post #30

Not a company, but sharing a personal project: I got a free broken 55" TV and turned it into a big daylight panel. I got a great explanation of why this works well (fresnel lens) from the DIY Perks channel on YouTube: Turning Smashed TVs into Realistic Artificial Daylight ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4 ). The main board had failed so the screen was black and the backlight cycled on and off. After disco…

Just FYI, repairing flat panel TVs by replacing the boards is fairly easy. Sometimes it's even an upgrade if you find a newer revision of the same board.

The boards tend to be used in multiple models of TV, so they're easier to find than you might think.

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

#138

Post by sdan »

nidhalbt wrote: post #22
sdan wrote: post #17

Using an old desktop my dad gave me to spin up some websites getting 1,000,000+ unique visitors monthly. It has some basic specs: 12gb RAM and 8 cores from a decade or so ago. Was using Raspberry Pis before, but given that many Docker containers don't support ARMv7, I'm just utilizing the luxury of AMD64 (and using Docker Compose, Traefik, and Wireguard to do scaling and networking).

Really cool! But can you tell us what you use Wireguard for?

Well I don't really want my home IP anything to do with my websites (don't want to deal with dynamic IP or whatever) so I just route traffic to a GCP instance (pretty small one) that routes to the internet (meaning cloudflare).

GCP instance is like the main Wireguard peer and I can easily add my laptop to the VPN so I can remotely ssh into my server.

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

#139

Post by 2fast4you »

cutety wrote: post #38
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’m still runnin a 2012 (non retina) without any issues, and I plan on keeping it until it literally won’t boot. What’s funny is I was initially annoyed as I got it a few weeks before they announced they were releasing the first Retina display models (discontinuing the non retinas), however getting the last non-retina generation was a blessing because that’s was that was when they also began making upgrading MacBooks…

Hey mine was non retina too!

It really was a fantastic piece of hardware, and probably the only Mac I’ll ever live. The dual SSDs(I replaced the cd drive too) gave it a few more years for me.

I’m pretty happy with the replacement I got though. It’s and MSI gaming laptop, but without the “gamer” look. It’ll handle anything I throw at it, so now I can take VR in the go.

Still gonna miss that MacBook though

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

#140

Post by DoubleGlazing »

I have a five year old HP laptop. It was an Elite model, top of the line when I bought it with an i7 processor and SSD.

14 months after I bought it the hinge failed and the screen part physically detached from the base, with only the data/power wire holding them together. This also broke the screen beyond repair.

Low and behold there had been a recall issued on that model to fix the dodgy hinge. Despite me having registered my laptop with HP on day one, they never told me - and the refused to fix it now as it was out of warranty.

So I carefully detached what was left of the screen and was able to disconnect the wires with no issues. I built a box to hold the base, with holes to attach an external monitor and plug stuff in. It now functions as part family media server and computer for the children.

Also never buying HP again.

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