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

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141–150 of 264 posts

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

#141

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…

What do you mean the Debian repo disappeared?

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

#142
post #102
post #58

I 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.

Rooms without windows do exist. So do rooms with their windows blocked off for various reasons.

Windows also can’t inform you that while it’s lovely right now, there’s a storm front that will be pouring rain in a few hours.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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 faster and the pictures are a little better. Still have the SE as a backup phone and because my banking software has no option to move between devices once configured. (Thank you Commerzbank!)

If you use your SE with one hand, be aware it is the last model of iPhone that can be used that way. Starting with the 6, all the larger ones have impossible reach from the bottom-right (typing) to the top-left (navigation), unless you have massive hands I suppose. In retrospect I wish I'd bought a couple of refurb SE's and not ever done a major-version iOS upgrade.

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

#144
post #38

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…

I snagged an official Apple refurb 2015 MBP (last decent keyboard) just a few months ago. They’re still out there.

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

#145
I have an ipad mini 1 that I keep wanting to leave plugged into the stereo to use for music but its version of Music is too old to access the copies of my stuff in the cloud and trying to update the OS just spins forever. This post made me decide to look into it and discover this is because it was jailbroken, and that blocks Software Update from working, so I've plugged it into the computer and am updating it from there.

Dunno if it'll actually end up working, right now I'm doing a backup and iTunes is saying it's "over capacity by 634 MB" and pinwheeling, but at least it's an attempt.

edit, an hour later: IT WORKS YAY, thanks for giving me a reason to fool with it.

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

#146
post #132

Old phones make for rather good CCTV/surveillance cameras. Anything made in the past 4-6 years will have great picture quality (during the day, mostly), Internet connectivity, alarm features, motion sensing, even object recognition.

What software do you use to turn a phone into a surveillance camera?

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

#147
I don't know if this counts as a Project, but a friend of mine is still using her black plastic MacBook[0] interfaced to a ton of audio gear.

I don't know if she uses it for anything other than audio, but she's a musician so I think that part is used pretty seriously.

[0]: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook_2.0...

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

#148

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…

Does this work with old cellphones? I’ve got a lot more cellphones lying around than TVs/monitors.

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

#149
I used my old Moto G1 as a baby camera/monitor. Ingredients:

- RTSP Camera Server on Moto G

- Address reservation for Moto G on DHCP server

- VLC and Shortcut to URL [1]

Worked like a charm. Much better than other solutions I considered trustworthy.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miv.rtspca...

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.miotti.Shor...

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

#150
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.

This is really neat. What are the limitations on what you can host? Are they just static sites?
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