
Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices? - thrwaway69
I am curious to know what companies and projects are trying to repurpose old phones, laptops and other tech devices. 
I feel this area is not explored as much as it should be.<p>Like converting your phone into a security cam or a radio controlled device, turning laptop into a streaming device etc.
======
reeddavid
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](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 disconnecting the main board, the backlight stayed on. I am
using the existing LED lights, but may replace them with the excellent color
quality LEDs recommended by DIY Perks.

~~~
Accujack
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.

~~~
mrguyorama
Though it's not exactly cheap. Some of the boards are often over one or two
hundred dollars

~~~
Accujack
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.

------
mjstone
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.)

~~~
sleighboy
What software do you use?

~~~
mjstone
I hacked together an Android app specifically for the purpose, so it doesn't
really answer the original question about generally available projects. (I
haven't got round to releasing the code as it's rather bespoke, but could do
if you're interested.)

~~~
sprobertson
I'd be interested in the general technique, "teach a man to listen for
beeps..."

~~~
mjstone
I FFT incoming sound buffers, and if the 2KHz band is the highest for a
suitable number of consecutive frames, then I send the email and stop
listening for a few minutes to avoid double notifications.

2KHz is the frequency of my machine's beep. Just triggering on overall noise
level alone would notify me each time the machine goes into spin, but using
the FFT allows it to be more discerning.

(I'll try to publish the code soon.)

~~~
reaktion
I'd appreciate seeing your code for this - I've intended to write a similar
app for listening to an old alarm system I have.

~~~
mjstone
I've now put it on GitHub: [https://github.com/martin-
stone/AndroidAudioNotifier](https://github.com/martin-
stone/AndroidAudioNotifier)

~~~
sleighboy
Thank you!

------
newhouseb
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 usually left by the door when we come home.

~~~
wpietri
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.

~~~
ohadpr
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.

------
speleding
An old monitor + previous generation Raspberry Pi: hangs on the kitchen wall
to display Find My Friends in kiosk mode. Connected to a timer so it's on in
the afternoon until dinner so you can see the family come home. Really cute to
see your children move as little picture icons across the map towards you from
school.

~~~
Symbiote
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.

~~~
speleding
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 in now?)

~~~
Symbiote
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.

------
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.

------
DarkCrusader2
[https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/)

They are attempting to build a os for smartphones based on Alpine linux with
the stated goal of supporting a 10 year life cycle. They have a limited list
of devices they support but I have heard good things about them.

~~~
collyw
I wish my hardware would last that long. Two previous phones I bought have
lasted less than 2 years.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
If I can get 2 years out of a phone, I'm "happy" (it lasted longer than I
expected it would).

------
swiley
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.

~~~
MrGilbert
I bought a x230 last year as my non-gaming computer, and I really like it. I
bought it for 117€, it was pretty beaten up. The display is the cheap TN
panel, has a light spot in the center, and the keyboard doesn't match my
locale. However, it has the top-level i5. (i5-3380M, I think). I also bought a
docking station at a bargain.

This year, I bought a new IPS display, a matching keyboard and a new screen
bezel for it. I'll hopefully be able to use it for some more years - I really
love the form factor.

~~~
rezgi
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 never fixed by Intel and never
acknowledged by Lenovo so no recall, and no fix. Just throw it away and
replace with a 256-512 GB SSD.

And the parts are cheap and plentiful. Get the docking station if you can, I
paid 30$ for two a few years ago (top of the range dock, the one with all the
connectors and 2x video out)

Also, the IPS upgrade is well worth it.

~~~
opless
IPS upgrade?

Tell me more!

~~~
severine
[https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=126294](https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=126294)

[https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/02/thinkpad-t430s-ips-
scree...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/02/thinkpad-t430s-ips-screen-
upgrade.html)

~~~
opless
Thanks! Though they seem to be x430s rather than the X230s :/

------
hawski
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...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miv.rtspcamera&hl=en)

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.miotti.Shor...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.miotti.ShortcutToURL&hl=en)

~~~
pks016
Can you provide some more details? I have a Moto G2 laying around. This sounds
interesting.

~~~
hawski
It should work with any Android phone. You install RTSP Camera Server on the
phone on the baby side. Configure it regarding the microphone use, video
quality etc. I think that by default it also records and you may want to
disable that, because it may fill up all the storage. To be sure disable
battery optimization for it. I recommend enabling time-stamping, so you can
see something even if it's quiet and dark, because with full screen VLC it may
be confusing if it's still working.

Then on your client device you need VLC. You can manually enter
rtsp://PHONES_IP:PORT every time, or make a shortcut and place it on your
homescreen. It was certainly easier for my wife. To make a shortcut use the
Shortcut to URL app. It's quite easy to use.

For it to work you need to make sure that phone's IP address will not change
under you. Your router should give the ability to assign an IP to a mac
address. If you have your own home DNS server you probably did not have to
read all that.

All apps are free and without ads and seem to be a labor of love.

------
shtack
I have an old iPhone SE plugged in and running a simple web server via
(disclosure: my app) [http://pocketweb.io](http://pocketweb.io)

The two sample pages seen there are hosted from this phone.

Edit: There's an Android version available as well.

~~~
gatherhunterer
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 hardware.

~~~
diego898
Could you say a bit more (provide some links) explaining this active second-
hand market? I love my SE!

~~~
biztos
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.

~~~
mcovey
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.

------
jerome-jh
I run [https://motion-project.github.io/index.html](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 almost all the laptops at home have been bought used (usually in Germany
where offer is plenty). All the tablets (Google Nexus 7 1st gen) have been
bought used. No regret when kids break one.

~~~
jason0597
What do you mean the Debian repo disappeared?

~~~
jerome-jh
Maybe it was just moved somewhere else, but still it appears they just do not
leave the very old versions available on the official ftp's and mirrors. As of
now it looks like the oldest available repo is the one for Jessie.

------
pkorzeniewski
I'm in the process of turning my Toshiba Libretto 110CT (a subnotebook from
1998) into a simple remote terminal (over ssh) with custom server software to
handle emails, rss feeds, chats and so on. It runs under FreeDOS and connects
to WiFi by a combination of PCMCIA ethernet adapter + mobile router with
built-in battery. I love the form factor and the "oldschool" keyboard, I have
regenerated the battery and it's quite light so it's really portable and
handy.

~~~
MrGilbert
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.

~~~
theodric
€150 is expensive? From what I remember of that thread a few weeks back,
everybody on HN is pulling down $400k + 250k options.

~~~
war1025
The people that comment on those threads are probably by definition the ones
in the highest salary brackets.

I'm fairly certain you meant your comment in jest, but figured it was worth
pointing out.

------
mherrmann
I set up a home movie system on a very old unused laptop. Installed Linux
(Xfce) on it because it is very lightweight and connected it to my TV with
HDMI. Now I can watch downloaded movies, but also stream on YouTube, Amazon,
Netflix etc. on one device without having to jump between UIs with their
various kinks. Very happy with this, because it was free and works better than
anything I had before.

~~~
hawski
Does it have HW decoding? Do you use VGA-to-HDMI adapter or just my definition
old very-old is very old itself? ;)

------
51Cards
This isn't a very creative "repurpose" like many of the others however... I
have purchased a few Surface Pro tablets off eBay with badly broken (read
completely shattered) screens and bent frames. Seems that once Surface Pros
have bad screen and chassis damage their price plummets even though the
internals are often fine. One of these is my workbench computer in my shop.
The tablet hangs on the wall with a thift store monitor and wireless KB
plugged in. Excellent performing computer on the cheap. Another runs as a Plex
media server and I just remote desktop into it.

------
cweiske2
The OUYA API server was shut down mid 2019 and rendered the gaming consoles
useless.

I reverse engineered the API, documented it and built a re-implementation that
makes the OUYAs fully working again:
[http://ouya.cweiske.de/](http://ouya.cweiske.de/)

------
mr__y
I use an old laptop (single core, 1g ram) as a remote desktop client. Since I
work regularly in two different locations this allowed me to buy only one
workstation which I keep at one location and that old laptop allows me to use
it from the other one. TBH I initialy did it as a fun project/experiment but
was amazed how well it worked[0] and stayed with it.

[0]That being said both locations have a fibre and the distance between them
is below 20 miles so neither bandwidth nor response times cause any issues

~~~
stmL
Is there any specific thing you did apart from having a fiber and being close
?

I tried to set up my home PC as a server with tincVPN and X2go, i couldn't get
a usable performance. Well, to be fair i tried using KiCAD remotely but even
the XFCE desktop interface felt sluggish. I also had fiber on the three nodes
(Vultr server, home server and my local machine).

~~~
z3t4
Did you use WiFi? An old Wifi router can easily add half a second of latency.
Even high end Wifi endpoint still adds a few ms of latency which can be
significant considering that short distances (20 miles) of fiber has sub ms
latency. A software router or switch can also add up to a ms of latency. Could
also try SSH (tunnel) instead of VPN as SSH encryption might be faster.

~~~
stmL
I don't know what the Vultr instance uses but i had cable connection on both
of my devices (home server and local machine).

I suspected ssh over tinc might bring latency since there is an extra layer of
encryption, i will try ssh tunneling. Thanks!

------
ChuckMcM
I find it amazing what you can do with old gear. Phones I've used for
bluetooth update stations, where a bit of code can read sensors and send
emails with the readings (on WiFi). Or small 'stick up' displays where you use
the web page widget in Android and just re-read the same web page over and
over again.

I used a number of laptops as servers because of the built in battery backup.
Less useful when they don't have on board ethernet since USB ethernet can be
flakey. Opening them up to disconnect the display backlight insures they don't
try to run themselves down by turning on the screen.

I've given away a number of machines to young people who wanted to learn
programming and computers but their parents both wouldn't trust them with the
"family" computer and they likely could not afford (or know how) to get a free
one. Back before WeirdStuff closed in the Bay Area I had an after school
activity that would be to take a few students to there and build a machine out
of parts, limit $20. Put together some really interesting machines that we
would install Linux on and be off and running.

Also have salvaged parts to make things, like PC power supplies to make a
benchtop power supply.

------
reaperducer
I had an old laptop with a broken hinge. I ended up flipping the screen all
the way around, velcroing it to the keyboard side, loading a bunch of personal
pictures into a slide show screen saver and then mounted it on the wall in a
picture frame.

I have an old iPhone with an app that uses the camera to watch for motion. If
something happens, it takes a bunch of still pictures and stitches them
together into a herky-jerky video and stores it for later.

I keep it on top of the kitchen cabinet to make sure the lady I pay to feed
and play with my cats when I'm away does both things. So far, so good. It's
hard to get people to actually play with pets when you're away, no matter how
much you pay them.

I think the app is called "GorillaCam." I don't think it's on the app store
anymore. But it reminds me that when the iPhone first came out, it didn't have
the horsepower to do video. But not too long after the App Store came out
there were third-party apps that would use the phone's still camera to make
poor quality videos.

~~~
sk5t
Just curious, did your cat-tender consent to remote monitoring as part of the
contract for service?

~~~
reaperducer
It's not remote. It's stored on the camera, and I check it when I come home
and then erase the videos because it's an original iPhone and has very limited
storage.

I didn't tell her that I record that she's arrived. Legally, I don't have to
because she's in my house.

Ethically, it never occurred to me to tell her. But if I did I don't think
she'd be surprised since so many of my neighbors have live-streaming cameras
in their homes. Most of them not even hidden -- they're right there on the
kitchen counter or on the piano with a blinking light.

------
sumanthvepa
I repurposed my old Intel Atom powered netbook to be an Emacs server. Until
recently, it sat in a corner and would have a half dozen emacs session running
screen. Every time I want to resume work on given project from any desktop or
laptop in my office or when I'm travelling. I simply open a remote X11 emacs
window on the machine, and viola! my entire development sesion is available to
me exactly where I left off. Tools used: Emacs, X11 (for windows, mac, and
Linux) Emacs tramp, and ssh, putty, and screen. For access from outside my
network OpenVPN and Viscosity VPN client on Mac and Windows. Last week I
replaced the atom machine with an Raspberry Pi 2.

------
exabrial
Reusing an old tablet to control the X32 Mixer at church, also using it with a
Arduino in a stompbox that emulates a keyboard, to turn pages on my sheet
music when playing guitar and both my hands are occupied.

------
forgotmypw15
I'm working on web forum/community software which should be compatible with
just about any Web-capable device, regardless of browser.

I've dedicated a lot of time to compatibility, and now it is usable and fully
feature-accessible in IE4, IE5.5, IE8, Netscape 3, 4, Opera 3-12, Lynx, w3m,
Chrome 1.0, old Safari versions, etc.

I'm still working on a few IE3 issues, will be fixed soon.

~~~
benboughton1
Who is this intended for? IE3, who would still be using this?

Don't get me wrong. Great achievement, just curious.

~~~
forgotmypw15
It's intended for time travelers, retro-computing enthusiasts, and post-
apocalyptic users with whatever device they found in the closet of the
abandoned building.

It's also intended as inspiration for Web lovers of all kind to show that that
it is possible.

------
seven
Not sure if this counts, but I stuffed some pumps into old cisco switches and
use those as cocktail machines.

[https://beastiebytes.com/robarboter.html](https://beastiebytes.com/robarboter.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4NPNJzPEr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4NPNJzPEr4)

------
MrGilbert
I used an old Kindle as an Information display in my home server (no typo) for
my home server. I provided a write-up over at the Unraid forum [1].

tl;dr: It got rooted, and was reprogrammed to fetch an image from a local
server running on Unraid. As I didn't know how to elegantly create an image
from live data, I opted for a svg template. I placed placeholder texts in this
svg, and then did a simple search & replace. With each update, I stored a copy
of the template as the "live" version, and then used Imagemagick to convert
the SVG to a format the Kindle would understand.

It was a nice project, but got replaced with a Grafana dashboard later last
year. :)

[1]: [https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75710-meet-
zeus/](https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75710-meet-zeus/)

~~~
Insanity
That's really cool, might be an idea for my kindle in the future :D

------
z3t4
It's always good to have an old device on hand for performance testing. It's
easier to discover performance issues on a slow machine, as you get to
experience the lag first hand.

------
biztos
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...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook_2.0_black.html)

------
gwbas1c
Not 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.

~~~
metalliqaz
you have a fancy new phone that isn't waterproof? mine is and it's not even
_that_ expensive.

~~~
lrem
I have learned the hard way that today's fancy waterproof phones can lose that
magical property when dropped. And then the warranty might not cover you when
it dies after being rained upon.

That's not what I, an old Defy user, had in mind :/

------
luckyshot
I have this for an old iPad 1
[https://xaviesteve.com/pro/weather/](https://xaviesteve.com/pro/weather/)

It tells the weather forecast and time for the next few days and at night it
goes into 'dark mode' which is nice, have it in a corner in my living room.

Edit: forgot to mention that if you use it, remember to do the 'Add to
Homescreen' so it displays in full screen.

------
PoorlyDirected
I've repurposed a couple old iPhones and a 2nd Gen iPad as baby monitors using
the aptly-named Baby Monitor app (no affiliation other than being a satisfied
customer). One sits in the kid's room as the mic/camera and the others serve
as the speakers/display. The app is fantastic as it works on essentially any
version of iOS and any iOS device. The iPad chokes on any website and barely
runs anything else, but works perfectly with the Baby Monitor app.

I wish more apps like this worked on older versions of iOS or Android. No need
to hack around with some alternative OS (not that there's anything wrong with
that) - it's usable by any non-techie with some old iOS devices.

------
sdan
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).

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

~~~
sdan
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.

------
kiwicopple
Recently I installed CodeServer ([https://github.com/cdr/code-
server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)) on one of my old laptops.

Now I can do my coding using VSCode, except I can do it from any computer that
has a browser (although Chrome seems to work the best).

I highly recommend checking out CodeServer (no affiliation)

------
vectronic
I use an old iPad with brightness turned way down as an indoor IP security
camera via the free Periscope HD app:

[https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/periscope-hd-h-264-rtsp-
cam/id...](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/periscope-hd-h-264-rtsp-
cam/id1095600218)

I also use an old iPhone mounted inside the front door as a Touch ID enabled
alarm control panel for a DIY HomeKit alarm system. This is using a Homebridge
plugin I wrote:

[https://github.com/vectronic/homebridge-alarm-
panel](https://github.com/vectronic/homebridge-alarm-panel)

------
kikokikokiko
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 well.

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

~~~
kikokikokiko
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.

------
jotm
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.

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

~~~
arbitcoin
Snowden's Haven app: [https://www.rt.com/news/414026-edward-snowden-privacy-
app-ha...](https://www.rt.com/news/414026-edward-snowden-privacy-app-haven/)

~~~
faitswulff
Ah, thanks. I tried this on an old Android phone but it was unusable. Perhaps
I'll have better luck with it when my Apple hardware ages out.

------
ProZsolt
I got a Raspberry pi 1 B+ for free because it wasn't powerful enough for
anything. Put it inside my old but perfectly working laser printer. Got a
Google Cloud Print(RIP) enabled printer.

[https://github.com/ProZsolt/runbook/blob/master/raspberry-
pi...](https://github.com/ProZsolt/runbook/blob/master/raspberry-pi-cloud-
print.md)

~~~
BrandoElFollito
You could still switch it into a network enabled printserver (usb to the
printer and a usb wifi card)

~~~
ProZsolt
I installed CUPS on it so it is a network enabled printer

------
timdaman
I spend a lot of time in the backcountry trekking, hiking, snowshoeing, and
canoeing.

Over the last couple years I have increasingly started using my iPhone for
navigation using GaiaGPS and Avenza PDF Maps.

My old phone, though unpowered for day to day life still functions great for
navigation. On long trips I’ll bring this second phone as a backup map/gps
which is smaller and lighter than the equivalent paper maps and navigation
tools.

------
rhardih
I've built a good ol' web app which runs in fullscreen mode on an old iPad 1,
turning it into a "smart" picture frame. Runs on top of Trello, with a small
backend in Go for caching and proxying. Works great.

~~~
dsiegel2275
I have an original iPad here just waiting around to die. Something like this
seems like a perfect use case for it. Thanks.

~~~
rhardih
I do intend to release it and also open-source the code at some point. It's
not entirely in that state yet, but I'll probably throw it up on a Show HN
when the time comes.

------
Raed667
I use an old laptop to backup data I save in Google Drive, in case my account
becomes inaccessible someday.

~~~
imgabe
Do you have a script or any automated way to save a backup regularly?

~~~
Raed667
I'm using deja-dup
[https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup)

------
num
Using an iPad Mini 2 inside a wall-mount as a control for various home
automation tasks.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/d7mpgh/ipad...](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/d7mpgh/ipad_mini2_inwall_mount_with_tilt_for_easy/)

It's been fun building custom iOS apps for HA tasks.

------
theodric
I put an Apple 4x PCIe AHCI SSD, a Radeon R9 280X, 2 additional SATA SSDs, and
a USB 3 card into a 2006 Mac Pro with dual quadcores and 32GB RAM. In doing
so, I converted it into a useful computer-cum-space-heater that handles almost
any modern workload I can throw at it, except for things requiring AVX
extensions that the CPUs don't support.

edit: even games! Even moderately-recent ones!

~~~
ComodoHacker
What OS do you run?

------
sincarne
I have a very old netbook running FreeDOS. I have installed nothing but nano
on it, and I use it as a distraction-free writing device. I also have a black
MacBook running Xubuntu, and it works great. Got a new, non-matching battery
for it for about CDN$60, and I get three or four hours of use on a charge.
Only issue is the wifi is sometimes flakey on newer routers.

------
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...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zzzbabymonitor)

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.

------
rypskar
I run boinc ([https://boinc.berkeley.edu/](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/)) on my
old computers, mostly
[https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/](https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/) to
help with climate and health research

~~~
speedgoose
Depending on how the electricity is produced in your area and whether you use
the heat for home heating, it may be better for the climate to simply turn
these computer off.

~~~
rypskar
My country have close to 100% green electricity and I need the heat a big part
of the year. According to the scientists it is better for the climate to run
the projects distributed this way than to use mainframes.

------
anderspitman
I'm working on a software stack that would let you plug a hard drive into an
old Android phone and access the files over the cloud in a Google Drive type
fashion. My patchbay[0] service is a step in that direction.

[0] [https://patchbay.pub](https://patchbay.pub)

------
dangerface
I replaced my roku stick with an old laptop and bluetooth keyboard and mouse,
it was great having a super fast and responsive smart tv. Ultimately I
replaced it with a $20 chromecast which is just as capable but with better ux.

Im using an ex corporate hp dl380e server for my home lab, loads of computing
power for dirt cheap because there is no SLA.

The server was cheap but the electricity is not, and while its powerful I
could get a modern quad core would be as powerful and use less electricity for
about the same cost over three years.

A lot of this stuff is e-waste not because its no longer powerful but because
it is no longer economically viable. A lot of e-waste, phones in particular go
to Africa to be reused, outside of this I don't see any reuse / recycling
thats realistic.

------
wastedhours
Saw a lot of great videos on YouTube about turning old laptop screens into
standalone HDMI monitors (with a simple $12 board). That now explains the the
stack of taken-apart laptops in the flat where I've been unable to get them to
release the screen...

------
egypturnash
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.

------
ForHackernews
You can contribute to the effort to port
[https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/) to old phones and help
unify hardware support in the mainline kernel.

------
alamortsubite
I use ancient Atom processor laptops to run our home automation servers.
Minimal power consumption, built-in battery backups, WOL/power, extremely
reliable, $40 on eBay.

------
everdrive
I have an old hand-me-down laptop from a relative. It's from 2011 and is a
Core i5. The screen is terrible, but otherwise it's perfectly capable.

I couldn't call it a "project," but I've installed a music player (Rhythmbox,
but pick whatever software you like) and hooked it up to some premium
speakers. It's the best music player I could hope for -- it can play literally
any format, doesn't phone home, and uses very little energy.

------
wpietri
I took an old tablet, stuck it to the wall above my desk with 3M's Command
picture hanging doodads, and now have an always-on display of my kanban board:
[https://kanbanflow.com/](https://kanbanflow.com/)

It's great to have a permanent visible reminder of what I intended to be
doing. I used to do that with sticky notes, but that had the big disadvantage
of not being visible except right at my desk.

------
jfitzpa22
I use a spare TV like a kiosk panel for the family calendar, weather, and
various RSS feeds.

~~~
gatherhunterer
What software do you use for the kiosk? I have been thinking of doing this
with Ubuntu Core using the Chromium snap and a custom website which it
refreshes.

------
Mikho
Here is interesting DIY video of things one can create from an old laptop.
Inside the video there is a link to creating a daylight lamp/panel from a
monitor -- it's really great and looks like a daylight from a window due to
specific materials used in monitors to evenly distribute light.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLP_L7Mgz6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLP_L7Mgz6M)

------
Holmes
If you have an old router with USB 2.0 ports lying around it's fairly
straightforward to install OpenWRT and Zerotier and make a VPN with a private
cloud attached if you mount a HDD, and as long as your file transfer
requirements aren't too intense. Have one running on my LAN and it works well
for FTP, SMB shares for backup, and normal VPN stuff. Plus, it doesn't consume
much power as it's MIPS chipset.

------
JohnFen
I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but my favorite
repurposing of old devices was when I was looking for something to do with the
eight Kaypro IIs I had kicking around about 15 years ago.

What I ended up doing was chaining them together to use as a single
multiprocessor PC. Those 8, working together, came very close to reaching the
same performance as a low-end "modern" PC of the time.

------
sli
I use an old Android phone as a dedicated Kodi remote for a media center PC
and my old Nexus 7 is pretty much exclusively for reading Jojo's manga.

------
arawde
This is not something I've done, but I've been holding onto this paper from
Princeton about using old mobile devices as compute nodes [1] which I think
might be of interest here

[1]
[https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotcloud17/program/present...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotcloud17/program/presentation/shahrad)

------
StapleHorse
Just until recently I was usging an old Nokia N85 for my running sessions. It
had dedicated physical buttons for playback, skip song, volume etc, the "Nokia
Sports tracker app" also suported polar heart rate monitor.

Some years ago it stop supporting direct upload of workouts and I had to send
the gpx file via bluetooth.

Last year battery died and I haven't found cheap replacements.

~~~
Holmes
Any Android burner phone with LineageOS.

------
subaru_shoe
I have an iBook G3 that i use to monitor a server and make announcements about
current workload, logins , lockouts and database health.

------
sahoo
My friend had a raspberry pi2, which he didnt want because of lack of bt and
wifi, that is my plex server now.

~~~
patrickk
Have you noticed any issues? Especially transcoding?

~~~
sahoo
I don't use transcoding, as plex asks premium account for internet
connectivity and transcoding is not needed over lan.

------
agentultra
My stack of old laptops and computers is repurposed into a franken-cluster
running various OpenStack services and testing applications on different
platforms and performance profiles. Also handy for testing dweb applications
and ideas.

Would be interesting to find a way to flash old dumbphones for something.

------
lammalamma25
Great platforms for CTF or pen-testing practice if that is something you
enjoy. I have a few raspberry pis and old phones that I test out new tools and
methods on. If something breaks or something I install looks questionable I
can factory reset them (the phones) and its no big deal.

------
Havoc
Old laptop + USB docks + old hdds made for a pretty respectable home server.
Especially since it was a gaming laptop so only the gfx was proper old

...struggling to work out what to do now though as the next generation of
laptops needs to retire. Might try donating but I'm not optimistic

------
jhabdas
Still hanging onto that 256MB thumb drive? Turn it into a key for a deniably
encrypted operating system: [https://habd.as/post/invisible-arch-
linux/](https://habd.as/post/invisible-arch-linux/)

------
hawski
I have a Thinkpad T42p, that I don't use anymore. I wonder how hard would it
be to gut it and with a small SBC like Pine64's Rock64 and some additional
board make it useful again. Question is how to drive: LVDS display, keyboard,
touchpad and trackpoint?

------
philshem
\+ Thinkpad X230 (2013 model, i5, 8gb ram, ssd) with docking station as a
media center running Kodi[0]

\+ Samsung Galaxy Express I8730 (2013)[1] as a remote control for that media
center[2]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_\(software\))

[1]
[https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_express_i8730-5271.p...](https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_express_i8730-5271.php)

[2]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore&...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore&hl=en)

~~~
philshem
Forgot to add an older entry-level android tablet (7”) used as a digital photo
frame, running Fotoo:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bo.fotoo&h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bo.fotoo&hl=en)

It’s a better display and cheaper than any off-the-shelf digital photo frames.
Fotoo syncs the photos from cloud storage, so family members can upload to the
frame, too.

------
ptidhomme
I use a bad Xiaomi Mi A2 for watching preloaded vids during commute, and
playing OpenMW !

It was my partner's former phone but she eventually broke the camera, and it
was quite sluggish. However, it has a big screen, a big battery life, and had
cost me 150€ anyway.

------
finsterbt
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.

------
heavyset_go
Old Android phone has LineageOS on it and acts as a remote for my TV and
Chromecast.

------
Jemm
I use my 6 year old OnePlus One as a smart phone.

It runs LineageOS just fine and I can barely tell it from a new phone. The
drawback is the camera is not as good as current flagships but I can live with
that as photos are still pretty good.

------
dr_dshiv
Idea: kids go house to house fund raising by collecting old phones plus $10
per phone (ewaste). They factory reset and load with kid friendly apps and
sell to Moms via cheepfone.com. Raise money for school tech clubs.

------
mrsernine
I use batocera linux in my old desktop for a very capable retro-games machine.
It's a little bulkier than the tipical Raspberry Pi + retropie installation,
but beats it's performance and comes for free.

------
mcjord
We created Viyo.io for this very purpose. With all of the ridiculousness
around security system privacy right now, we wanted to build a web-based,
privacy-first solution because it's something that we wanted but couldn't
find. Basically you can use almost any web-accessible device as a security
camera, or to observe your cameras. We've had a super awesome response so far,
and we've been able to add a ton of backwards compatibility. Some of our users
are using 7+ year old Android devices.

------
efesak
Using broken phone (nexus 5x) with nice camera for timelapsing hill for
paragliding club

[https://croncam.com/svatobor](https://croncam.com/svatobor)

------
xtiansimon
Reminded me of using an old Nokia N900 to watch EdX videos offline while
commuting. No cellular, just Using WiFi.

Loved this little Nokia because Maemo OS was Linux-based, had a keyboard and
terminal.

------
alexweber
I’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!

------
metahost
Run BOINC(Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), a distributed,
high throughout computing initiative that runs with volunteer computing. It
helps solve cutting edge research problems in science.

It is easy to set up (just screate an account with scienceunited.org) and
great to contribute to. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows and Android!

Link: [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/)

------
RootReducer
I set up an old iPad as a picture frame that shuffles through all my photos.
It's been wonderful reliving memories and vacations! I did have to buy a third
party app to do the shuffle since Apple removed it a few OS versions ago
though.

------
ValentineC
Q: are there any uses for old Core 2 desktops _without_ onboard GPU that
consume ~200W when idle?

I'm wondering if I should just trash my old desktop, especially if it'll be
cheaper in the long term to get something more power-efficient.

~~~
kn100
200W when idle?! That's ridiculous! I'd personally just trash it, unless the
upfront cost of something more power efficient is too high.

------
moralsupply
Use old speakers and cellphone to generate random noise to annoy your noisy
neighbors

~~~
travisporter
You kid but works great for a white noise generator

------
XnoiVeX
I use an old Ipad (retina screen) with Dakboard free edition stuck to the
refrigerator as a family calendar and photo frame. It works really well with
open weather and google photos, google calendar integration.

------
runxel
My laptop broke at the hinge; now I have two parts. I wanted to convert the
screen into a touchscreen for a while now. Not sure what I am going to do with
that, tho. Maybe hook it to a Raspi?

------
tr4s
I built an "autonomous" remote-controlled car using an old iPhone:
[http://pyetras.com/car3](http://pyetras.com/car3)

------
WhiteOwlLion
I have about 30 Android smartphones I am using for volunteer distributed
computing (BOINC). Most are running Android 4.x

------
fernmyth
I made blurb.cloud so that an old phone or tablet could serve as a shared
billboard.

------
xena
I turned a Surface 3 (non-pro) into a wall clock that displays the current
weather.

~~~
collyw
I find a window a very effective way to monitor the weather.

~~~
egypturnash
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.

------
buboard
use an old laptop to run the opensimulator 3d world server (open source second
life)

------
osobo
shadow.tech lets me run a Windows 10 gaming spec desktop on all my old
devices.

------
aglavine
Retropie Old Laptop

