Low-hanging fruit, not particularly hacky, but really nice: Android phone on guitar pedalboard. Metronome, tuner, backing track jukebox, etc. I run the headphone jack into a Boss looper pedal. Very handy to have a dedicated android in the effect loop.
Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
241–250 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#242Earlier 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…
There are only a few niche phones on the market in the US right now that can be used with one hand. I know because I insist upon it and haven't been able to buy a new phone (I also insist upon being able to run a fully de-googled LineageOS or similar ROM). So I use a Motorola Moto E 2015 model and will continue to indefinitely, until there is a phone that fits my required specifications.
There are a few small phones available, but most of them are too small like the Palm phone or Unihertz Atom. There's nothing that's just normal with a 4" - 4.5" screen.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#243Not 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…
I'm curious - was that TV edge-lit? I've been on the search for a suitable TV for this project for a while now. Most of the cheap/broken TVs you can find are backlit with fluorescent tubes. I disassembled one and discovered it did not have the lens. And from searching for TVs, it looks like most large screens (beyond about 30") directly backlight with LEDs rather than using LEDs around the sides. Was wondering if the direct-lit LED TVs still had the lens.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#244I have about 30 Android smartphones I am using for volunteer distributed computing (BOINC). Most are running Android 4.x
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#245Not very creative: I use my older phone to read books in the hot tub. This way, if I drop it, I don't loose my fancy new expensive phone.
you have a fancy new phone that isn't waterproof? mine is and it's not even that expensive.
I used to have a waterproof phone, but when the back started peeling off exposing a circuit board when it was 1 year old, I decided that the claim was bogus.
A good phone is expensive enough that certain risks just aren't worth taking. :)
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#246I’m using an old Asus netbook as a home server. I installed Xubuntu and now I use it as a Docker host for Plex, a torrent server, and other projects. It works surprisingly well!
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#247I 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 a cute hack!
I tried several approaches to this problem, with an ESP8266 and a water-flow measurement on the intake, via a microphone/vibration sensor catching the spin-cycle, and finally via measuring electrical consumption (again on the spin-cycle).
Sadly I had to remove the setup, but it was a fun project that took a few months of iteration to get working.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#248use an old laptop to run the opensimulator 3d world server (open source second life)
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#249Earlier 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…
While I agree with this, I have an Intel graphics version of the T430 (running Ubuntu) and it doesn't seem to play nice with two external monitors, even with the "fully loaded" docking station :(
I had external display issues as well, with a T440 and an UltraDock under Debian. It was mostly flickering and blinking of the outputs, but occasionally a display wouldn't come out of powersave mode.
You may have already found and tried these possible fixes, but just in case you haven't-
1) There's a firmware update for the docks that is supposed to resolve a number of display issues.
2) It appears that similar issues can be caused by having a defective or incorrectly-sized dock power supply. So replacing the power supply with a known-good and/or bigger power supply might help.
Though, in my case, neither of the above helped. It turns out I had a bad HDMI/VGA adapter. Since eliminating that, I've had zero display issues. But I'm guessing that probably doesn't apply to you, since my configuration is a little unconventional.
Anyway, I hope you find something that fixes it for you.
Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Though it's not exactly cheap. Some of the boards are often over one or two hundred dollars
Yeah, though most are between 100-200. If you can find a list of what model numbers and revisions will work for your TV, you can watch Ebay for a used one.