Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

far.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 122 posts

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#91

Post by mkesper »

munk-a wrote: post #41
ActorNightly wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phones can have battery removed somewhat destructively, but without affecting the rest of the phone. Generally, as long as you keep the phone plugged in, the battery should be safe virtually indefinitely - the battery management on board will keep it in a state where its a constant charge which means the chemistry will be stable.

There were several generalizations in that statement that align with my similar fears to the OP. Most firmware should minimize the charge cycling, most batteries should be stable at constant charge... most isn't great for something that I want to sit in the corner undisturbed for a decade just chugging along - I have a few old desktops I use whenever I need a stand alone server or to host something web-live for a whi…

Every old hardware needing a fan is also a silent fire risk.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#92

Post by mkesper »

kqr wrote: post #89
jprd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not educated enough in this area to have any expertise, however, in my personal experience leaving a lithium-ion battery plugged all the time results in scary semi-exploded batteries that also stop working. Would you say this is a chemistry/QA problem? Have there been advances in battery / controller technology that achieves the above?

How uh, does one find out about battery problems? I almost exclusively use laptops, and I tend to leave them plugged in most of the time. I don't want a sudden lithium-ion battery fire. Can I detect ahead of time that things are going bad? (My current machine is a Thinkpad P52 if it matters, but I also use older Macbooks and newer Thinkpads and older Dell machines this way, although they're plugged in less often thes…

1. Improve longevity by charging Li-Ion only up to 85% of marketed capacity (can be configured at least on Thinkpads).

2. Open up the laptop and check if battery is swollen. After about 10 years, it's also a good idea to replace the CMOS battery before leaking.

3. Without opening, sometimes keys/trackpads don't work anymore as expected. This might be due to swollen battery packs (we had several Dells where this happened).

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#93

Post by leobg »

jjice wrote: post #27

The thing that holds me back from this is always the battery. I want to have my battery removed so that it doesn't eventually become a time bomb, but it's a pain on modern phones and I'm not even sure if they boot without. The mobile hardware reuse space can suck for hobbyists.

> I grabbed a few power point timer switches, and set them to only over up the charger for a hour a day. Never had another battery puffing failure - at last not in the next 2 or 3 years before I left.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45021233

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#94

Post by leobg »

I have an old iPhone XS lying around with a broken digitizer. Basically, it's recording phantom touch events all the time, making it unusable. Though the screen itself, camera, CPU etc. are all working fine.

Any ideas what I can do with it to give it some purpose?

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#95

Post by vjerancrnjak »

Inspired by this, went to look into how much performance I can squeeze and turns out Qualcomm software practices are so bad that I can’t do much but accept old software.

It sounds like Qualcomm has to do everything from scratch on their hidden Linux software for every new chip.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#98

Post by Muromec »

norman784 wrote: post #51
retrac wrote: post #42

If the device can run PostmarketOS with a mainstream kernel, then it can run any Linux distribution. (I put Arch ARM on such devices, since I like that distro.) That's the big hurdle though - mainstream kernel support. For most devices, even if they can be rooted and jailbroken, you're stuck with the kernel they come with. Doesn't have a new feature you need? A horrible security flaw in the network stack? You're out…

Is Arch ARM officially supported by the same team? If not, what might be the reason?

I think the reason is they don't want to become debian where deciding anything takes foverever. Another architecture is a liability, so it lives in another "project" that official arch is not committed to.

I write this from arch on arm (orange pi) thingy, btw

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#99

Post by zoobab »

ActorNightly wrote: post #33

Don't even need postmarketOS. Simple root, with a custom degoogled rom, and termux is all you need.

"Simple root"

You don't need root if you webserver is listening on a port over 1024.

Termux plus some webserver like nginx is all you need.

Now to make it reboot resistant is another story.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#100

Post by 867-5309 »

officeplant wrote: post #36
ChrisbyMe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I wonder if using a regular sff pc fan might work if you don't need the touchscreen. Just thermal paste to the battery hah

I do Wigle wardriving with a dedicated cheap phone these days. (Moto G Stylus 2023) In order to prevent issues this time around I've preemptively removed the back of the phone, and the camera modules so I can have a nice flat phone. Then I bought a heatsink nearly the same size as the phone itself. I've got thermal pads on the SoC which sits lower than the battery and the heatsink itself had thermal adhesive on it pr…

hardcore Wigler right there :)
Post reply on HN