While cleaning, I found an old Redmi 12 phone that’s still in perfect condition. Anyone know what fun things I could do with it? Thinking about experimenting software wise, repurposing it for other things etc. Any ideas?
I would like to host a website ifitwere easy.
- Termux has lots of possibilities
- Pair it with a Meshtastic node and make it a dedicated communicator
- I run HomeAssistant and Emby and have several old smartphones to work with, so one lives in each room and act as remotes for those
- Setup Asterisk and make a VoIP system using old smartphones and SIP clients as handsets
- Check if PostmarketOS supports it. I haven’t used it, but it basically turns your phone into a Linux machine if I understand correctly
- Use it as your “ugh, I have to use an app for [THIS]?!” phone. Basically things that require an app for setup or one-off apps you can’t avoid using.
- Make your own little portable Library of Alexandria. Install Kiwix and download a bunch of ZIMs from their library. If you’ve got at least 130 GB to work with, you can even fit the entire Wikipedia dump with images and have that locally.
Thanks! Lots to check out here. It’s 128GB tho, so the entire Wikipedia dump will sadly not be possible … hahaha The “useful useless app” phone might be the way to go. Other than that I was also thinking about using it as a dedicated (offline) media player
Wikipedia dump from kiwix is 111gb and there are smaller versions with only popular articles or specific languages
Full Wikipedia without photos or video is about half the size.
I use the web version rather than the app, but I want to say the app can store the library on the SD card if you have one of sufficient size lying around and if the Redmi has the slot for one. But as someone else said, there are smaller versions you can download if you can’t fit the full one.
Not trying to push Kiwix on you, but I just can’t emphasize enough how handy it is to have offline Wikipedia always on hand.
ugh, I have to use an app for [THIS]?!"
I had to do this just the other day. Hospital wanted to use a third party stuff for a sleep monitor. Talk about an invasive app!
Fine, you go on this phone that was never used by me, that’s been wiped and had lineage installed.
Buy yourself some nice in-ear monitors and set up a DAP (digital audio player) for yourself. I’m not sure there’s a community on Lemmy, but there is /r/DigitalAudioPlayer that set me up. Fuck Spotify and their algorithms. Own your music.
I was leaning towards this option. Any music apps you’d recommend? Got a Bandcamp catalog that could get a nice and worthy place now
PowerAmp is popular, but there are a lot out there.
One of the things I’m planning to setup on an old pixel 3a is a hotspot with a web page basically containing some YouTube channel videos. I travel and figure someone will be bored when there is no internet access and can watch some SCUBA diving videos maybe I will get some subscribers when they are connected again.
I also use old phones and tablets as wall mounted HomeAssistant controllers.
Install something like Fotoo with Syncthing and you have a picture frame that you can have display your favorite memories. Or if you are traveling you can have new pictures upload when charging via Syncthing and someone at home can see the sights while you travel. If you setup a mount and install it on a window with an app that takes pictures on a schedule you can build a time-lapse camera and let it run forever.
Give it to a younger child as a learning tool with different learning apps. Donate it to a school somewhere with less access to technology. I donated an old laptop to a dive shop in Belize with Linux and Kiwix installed along with a copy of Wikipedia and a bunch of other learning information as well as a Python environment and the manual pages and a Rust environment with is manual pages.
Install a camera app that basically turns it into an IP camera and integrate it into your security system (great for apartments) or to monitor a pet or loved one. Or steam the video of your view from your home or work window. Add a battery bank, solar panel and waterproof everything and you have a remote camera you can put anywhere wifi works.
Be very careful about leaving a phone or tablet on a charger for an extended period of time. The vast majority do not support bypass charging for preserving the battery. That means your battery may fail catastrophically after only a few weeks or months of constant charging.
This needs to be a big PSA.
There are apps that will allow you to set a phone up for use as a camera (e.g. for home security). These are potentially dangerous and should not be used.
It’s not trying to constantly charge though. Look at the power draw of any phone, there’s a cut-off point where the battery management system says “enough is enough”. I recently noticed in own testing that this lies beyond 100% for a few phones that I tried, but it’s very clear when it e.g. drops from drawing 0.2A to 0.03 and it scales with things like turning on the screen or running a game. It isn’t charging then, it’s just driving the device. If the charger isn’t sufficient, it’ll draw from the battery and, when that gets below BMS’ threshold, will charge again. Many modern phones can also be set to 80% to reduce battery stress further. The types of batteries in smartphones cannot safely go without a BMS
One would have to actually do a study to know for sure but it works the same in laptops and there we know people leave them on chargers routinely, sometimes also for the decade that they use the device. My experience with that is that some batteries degrade rapidly, others seem good as the day they were created, seemingly not correlated with how you treated them. But my sample size is too low; of course from science we know that it does matter. Just not so much that it’s a matter of months (much less weeks) before it fails. The odds of it failing in your pocket in the 3 years before are not much lower than it failing in the 3 years subsequently on a charger, especially if you don’t let it get hot (good ventilation)
Oh I’m not planning to do that! Don’t trust any piece of technology permanently plugged in to a charger!
Kali Nethunter
I use mine as an always on syncthing node. After people on here told me last time that i was inviting death, i put it into a ceramic plant pot with a lid and set it on the balcony with a long charging cable. Its still in reach of my wifi so it works perfectly fine. If it burns, it burns outside with nothing flammable near it :)
If you instead connect it to a portable solar charger + powerbank, you could even remove the grid connection and just put it in a sealed plastic box outside.
I use one as a camera monitor for my kids’ baby monitors.
A more general idea would be setting up a weather/forecast display.
It is not recommended to use an old phone as a camera monitor due to the risk of failure. Phones are not meant to be left on the charger and in use constantly like that. Degraded batteries due to the phone being older can compound this issue.
I’ve got one set up as a screen for a 3D printer. Printed a mount for it, ran a USB-C cable to the mount, and have it locked on the printer’s app.
