I've been using mobile phones for years as web servers, wifi routers, for running computations, downloading torrents. The funny thing is the raspberry pi costs like 50+$ and has nothing more but a 4x1.5GHz CPU, max 4GB of ram and wifi+bt. For that price you can actually buy a slightly damaged s8-10 phone that bas a huge battery, 4G modem, 8 core CPU, 4-8GB RAM, lots of drive space and many more. It also uses a lot less power on standby.
@@loopingdope you just install Termux and inside it you install the regular server stuff like SSH, nginx etc. The only actual limitation is that if the phone is not rooted, you have to use port numbers higher than 1024
Me too , i personally used droidian to convert the phone into a linux based server and settled it up with tailscale so that I can ssh into it securely and make it do whatever I want
@@loopingdope I think you could just figure it out how to run Linux or something. Otherwise I would look at some sort of terminal applications or a virtual machine.
Smartphones have: accelerometer, gyroscope, which can be used as a horizon level or motion sensor, thermometer, camera, microphone, compass, gps, light sensor, fingerprint scanner, retina scanner (in Samsung), NFC reader, fm radio in some models, Internet access (online radio, weather forecast, transfer of files to the server, for example, video from a surveillance camera, etc), barometer, SD-card, SIM-card and other features.
Yeah. But not every function is available for diy. Fingerprint scanner and "retina" scanner. They are locked. I have no clue what phone that has retina scanner. Not even iPhone.
@@LordGryllwotth it could be possible to use the face id sensor on the iphone! it's a great 3d scanner and there are external apps that use it to create 3d models
@@LordGryllwotth thats easy dude! I use OpenCV for that! As long as you know programming! You can use any hardware on the phone! Vibrator, camera, gyro, accelerometer....
Probably my old phone is faster than a raspberry. And it is impossible to find a 4G/5G sim module for microcontrollers but we can use our old mobile phones. This is awesome.
You can attach a simple arduino board the same way and communicate it through serial connection. It will expand wastly the IO ports and you can use the phones camera and muscle to do harder stuffs. Also there is firmata. A library to arduino which allows you to "remotely" (using serial comms) configure and control the pins. With it you don't need to write separate code to the arduino each time you modify something in your code in the phone regardles if you want to use more ports.
Exactly. I tried this to make an Remote Controlled RC car, but instead of buying the modules for the connectivity, camera, etc. I just simply hooked up an old Android that has a mobile data connectivity then create an android app that connects to a remote server that can communicate with the arduino serial. Works flawlessly until I accidentally crashed the RC car into a parked car which caused the charging port to broke off lmao.
My Galaxy S4 was one of my favourite phones ever precisely because it was so easy to disassemble. I woke up one morning to discover I'd tipped a glass of water over it in the night and fried and USB port. Five minutes on eBay to source a replacement (whose postage was more expensive than the board) and I was back up and running twenty minutes after it arrived. Strongly suspect that my next phone will be one that promotes this sort of sustainability over being 3% lighter or whatever.
nokia phones are doing good repairability wise even xiaomi phones too tbh and you also could flash gsi/custom roms on both of them for basically 10+ years of software updates
My S4 has been in the washing machine. Twice. It still works, it is running a boroscope, hardware plus app, in my motorcycle workshop. One of my favorite phones ever.
Caveat is that sometimes phones behave strangely when you supply constant voltage to the battery pins, since they seem to expect voltage to go higher or lower over time as the battery exhausts itself. I think I've seen that some models of phone will strangely report the "battery's charge" declines until it hits 0 and then shut down. Depends on the model of phone; sometimes it might expect there to be a thermistor there, or BSI, or who knows what. Sometimes you might have to try and harvest an old battery's charge/control board and solder your power input to that as an intermediary, so that the phone at least thinks a proper battery is indeed inserted.
That's exactly what would keep me from doing a serious project with a phone: There is so much stuff on there over which you have no control. And rooting the phone and replacing all the software looks like a lot of work.
I did a similar project were i used the display of the phone and some photoresistors to control a rc car. Right now i have 10 old smartphones lying around waiting to be used.
I had a similar idea and created a ground drone with an old phone. The fun part is that you can turn on the mobile data and control it from another continent.
@@Normy0000 connect multiple old phones and run a cluster compute , though you need a laptop or PC and actual problems to handle useless if you are norme, though you can make a farm and advertise for game afk farming XD
@@moetocafeNot just vender locked though, there are a number of things Android itself locks you out of doing without root, it'd be like Windows not giving users administrator access, the only reason we have sideloading is because Google allows it.
Android is in full control of the hardware, meaning it will force your application to stop at random weird moments, that's why it can't be used for anyting reliable. Imagine you have built a drone using old android phone, you have evrything, hd camera, gps, lte, gyro, lot of ram, space and cpu power, just that your drone might just stop responding because android will just kill the app that controls it. That's the problem.
android can be configured to run in different modes. Kiosk mode makes whole device locked to one single app which can't be killed or terminated and awlays stay in control. Rooting is the ultimate option.
Your idea is great. I want to share my idea with you. We all know that bluetooth headphones have a very small receiver. It is convenient for all sorts of crafts, robots, and toys. It has a battery and a charge controller on board. If we make an application that will encode commands into sound of a certain frequency and transmit via bluetooth, and on the receiver side we put an arduino that receives the sound and decodes it into commands, then we can make a universal platform for controlling toys and gadgets. We get rid of problems with switching android - arduino. And the sketch for arduino will be a few lines. How do you like the idea?
Yeah, nice idea if you have an old BT speaker or headphones you can take it from. But I think you need to run some FFT analysis on the Arduino to distinguish the frequencies. And that might slow down the actual application. I would rather use a HC-05 Bluetooth module or an ESP32 with Bluetooth. And a power bank would make a good battery with charge controller.
I like it, but I don't have time right now. Also, it's possible to use cheap universal BT receivers and program the BT device on the Arduino accordingly. ESP32 would also work over Wi-fi, besides BT.
There's no need to encode/decode sound streaming, it's much simpler than that. Just use an HC-05 or HC-06 module, there are dozens of similar projects on RUclips.
this is because android phones and rasp PI's share a common foundation called linux kernel. The android OS is a modified linux kernel, while the rasp pi OS is also a modified Debian distro.
Nice! Make a turret to mount on and then also controls for water and food dispensing so can have an audio video interface with camera control to call your pet when food and water is dispensed as well as lower their anxiety when one is away for a few days at a time. Awesome work! Such a waste the old phones are and such great device capabilities like even as a webcam alone.
intresting. i would use this to implement something like i2c protocoll to get a few more i/O ports. also there are a lot of i2c sensors out there. also the cameras, gyro and a lot of other stuff can be used in the app... im not sure what projekts i will do but i will try this.
@@SalimShahdiOff Yes, but only for PC software. Anything web application related has been built on fixed versions of open source components that cannot be updated, have hundreds of dependencies on other fixed versions of open source components and some of then cannot even be installed in parallel to other versions of said components. When you are maintaining or extending software that has been written a couple of years ago chances are you need a separate virtual machine for the development tools, have to dig up components out of dubious archive websites because the used versions are out of support, no more officially available and the documentation has been taken off the web long time ago.
I've been using an old Samsung S8 and two S10s for a portable baby monitor and two media centers for years now. The media center capability of Samsung DeX is amazing - you just slap a HDMI hub to the phone, connect it to a TV or an unused monitor and you have the most advanced android smart TV you can imagine, for next to zero money. You can also connect a keyboard and a mouse to it, and with a bluetooth app - operate it remotely with another phone.
Damn, so glad I found this video. Been really getting into micro.controllers recently, but had no idea phones could be so useful for projects... I have four phones sitting in a box, waiting until I could find a use for them.. So many interesting comments from viewers too
You can use the USB for charging the phone and a Bluetooth module on a microcontroller to transmit and receive RS232 type serial communication. I did that once so I could switch the solar power to my floodlight remotely from my website when I was living on a small island.
Even the older phones wont charge nor work with a simple plus and minus supply on its battery connector! You have to put a resistor between the battery sensor pin. Out of my mind I think its a 2.4k resistor or something around that. I have very old phones and none will work by simply connectingn plus and minus to the battery pins.
The resistor you mentioned is actually a thermal resistor that prevents the battery from being charged when it is too hot or too cold. But as in my case I don't want to charge the phone, it also works without it.
@@DoctorVolt As I said. Many phones wont even take the power from the plus and minus without the response of the battery. So all phones that I have wont even work without the resistor.
@@DoctorVolt Actually for me it worked on a Samsung S3, J5 and Huawei P8 lite with the power wires soldered to the battery BMS (I removed the battery cell because it was dead and the phone had many other problems anyway).
I've converted some phones into personal encrypted walky-talkys, scanning receiver, radio signal direction finder, All wth Waterfall Display. Using an IR LED in place of the Torch/Flash LED, I made an "Everything" Learning Remote Control.
Можно убрать Android и написать свой простой графический интерфейс для ядра Linux. Про этот процесс писал в своём текстовом блоге Monobogdan. Ещё он использовал порты GPIO на материнской плате смартфона, чтобы подключить стик геймпада и внешний модем GSM
You have to buy a lot of components for the pi that come built into a phone. Battery, touchscreen, accelerometer etc. Also it gives a use for old phones that struggle to have a purpose otherwise. I think it's great
Termux gives you a Linux-y environment to run software in, it even can make use of sensors and phone specific hardware if you get the f-droid version, so if you have a mostly software project that could benefit from something you can easily find in a phone, that may be a good starting point.
There should be a standardized/popularized app & PCB to do this with old Android and possibly Apple devices, so DIYers don't have to do all of this themselves.
@@chasewatkins3096 @lshxggyl There are many different ports, phones, and reasons that people will want to use a RasPi. And if you're just using it as a server, none of this is needed.
Great video! I have a few old android phones. I want to create an annunciator for my airplane. Adding a voice library or just play recordings to the audio system will get me the audio. Attaching it to some sensors and a shut up button, software and boom! an annunciator.
Okay. Open questions: - What about soldering to some pads to turn the phone on and off? - What if the phone doesn't want constant voltage? Seems to be especially a problem when booting up but I also heard about devices where the percentage still decreases over time... I think the temperature contact(s) should somehow be taken care off... - What happens if somebody puts in a charger at the USB port while the phone is powered by constant voltage instead of by a battery? Will that just be fine?
Ideally I would like to have a solution that allows to either connect some random battery (of the same type ofc to keep it simple...) or a power supply thus that a phone that stays at one place for the majority of time could also be taken with to somewhere if necessary.
1. Is safe to connect 5v to the battery terminal, I've tried on lots of device 2. You can use a esp32 or stm or whatever as uart to gpio adapter (Or use the phone as uart HMI touch screen)
@@dafoex all phone after android 5 support OTG by default, especially USBC directly call for bidirectional support, it is(at least in theory) more reliable, less delay, and maybe faster if you need it
The main problem is phones being phones. Android likes to kill apps randomly, not all of them support USB OTG, and aging hardware can and will fail - especially batteries. iOS is also a problem since it is so locked down, you can't just connect an arbitrary USB device to it, and I can't imagine serial over Bluetooth is easy, either. Also iPhones are heavy to make users think they are more expensive than they actually are, so there's no hope if you have weight constraints such as a flying project. Software stuff is probably your best bet if you want to use an old phone. Install Termux and get a Linux-y environment you can SSH into.
Some phones need a 10k resistor connected between ground and the middle pin to fool the battery temperature sensing or else the phone won't start up. Also, some phones need a constantly connected USB charger as well, otherwise the non-existing battery can "discharge" over time, because the percentage gets calculated by the phone's dumb software. So, if the phone starts becoming warm with a connected charger, simply connect the "battery" positive trough a diode instead. If this is not enough, connect a 16V 1000µF & 10V 2200µF capacitor between the "battery" positive and negative for some additional capacity. ⚡ I made my old "Lenovo A2010" running from a 4.5V mains adaptor this way, because I only used it in my room and I didn't wanted to make the aftermarket battery into a pillow over time. It's stable, it successfully shows the clock since months, but it can't work in case of a power outage. 📱
Nice video. I actually use old phones to watch movie in bed, but I also use them as my TV remotes, usually by casting content seamlessly across the network. With a vnc my phone becomes a wireless print server for my wireless printer. The list goes on...
Would love to see more videos like this. I have a semi dead S9+ I'm using as a webcam and a few other phones lying around. Would love to use them for something useful :)
@Brain_pocketer 1. For some tests, 3Ghz Pi5 is slower than 2.2 Ghz Pi4B. And much slower than RK3588 2.4Ghz. 2. Pi 5 is 16nm, G99 is 6nm. Pi 5 is really HOT! BTW, the TCO of G99 is much lower than Pi 5. I love G99 very much.
It is possible to visualize the use of a touch-screen phone to control a greenhouse. I imagine that it will have a lot of applicability for rural production. You can control a mushroom greenhouse, all from an old phone. I imagine that you would have the graphs, numbers and controls at your fingertips. Very interesting.
Everything is okay until he solders the battery and directly connects with the branch power supply, he can do the same with esp32 and send data using wifi or with bluetooth, and doesn't even need any soldering or opening the phone.
Comparing a used android phone to a raspberry pi is like comparing a used kenworth semi truck with a trailer to a brand new base model f150 that doesnt even come with a bed on its frame. The fact that a used phone even has a battery and a decent screen makes it way better depending on what project your doing.
I'm not sure why, so bear with me, but I clearly see someone watching this video 10 years from now, from a hard drive labeled 'very useful - don't waste' in a bunker while hiding from the UN. Thanks for posting something very useful and not to be wasted (I'm going to download this one and put it on the HD, even though I've only used a soldering iron twice in my life).
I'm wanting to make a device similar to the Solid Eye from MGS4, and I was planning to use a Raspberry Pi, but since I already have a old moto e5 with all components, might as well use it. I'm pretty new to this type of science tho
That's Arduino level, not Pi. You can control electeonics with it, but you can't use it as a computer cause all the parts are heavily integrated (unlike RPi).
Guess you could use any phone to program a microcontroller arduino or such..but I thought raspberry pi has a microcontroller chip you can buy also. The phone got a nice display interface though.
Phones running the mainline linux kernel with a distro like ubuntu/mobian replaced the raspi for me years ago. My oneplus 6 has 8 cores 8gb ram 128gb ufs storage no pi can compete against that
@@DoctorVolt yes , but type c phone you can charge it and powers the attached device. OTG with two usb connectors, one for input ( charging) the other one for the device
We could use this as a fast iot board, something as simple as hosting apps via ssh ing into the phone and deploying docker there So much more is possible but I wanna try using an old phone as a server They have 4-8 cores, 1-4 gig rams, a very efficient arm processor, builtin wifi and ble
with rs485 modbus i/o device you can read digital and analog ios via modbus read coil write contact and read / write holding register commands. you will need usb tu rs485 converter for about 5 usd
All my old phones have a purpose. My old destroyed S8 acts as my power efficient Desktop (I overclocked it too), then my old Galaxy S5 acts as dashcam in my car. I got more ofc.
Nice project. The use of a FTDI USB adapter is rather limited. But what would be really cool is to move to an Arduino Nano and implement a firmware that lets the pins / functions mapping be set from Android app and then command executed remotely. This would allow the implementation of analogRead/Write and maybe also some basic I2C functionality (like reading / writing bytes).
I was also thinking of that. But finally I decided for the solution that's more effortless to implement. (You only need to program the phone, not both phone and MCU)
It's a very nice ideia! But the problem is that the phone like a general purpose computer,. It's not a dedicated device. For example if the power runs out, the Android will restart and you will be in the home screen.... not in the app that control the USB.
I saw a samsung galaxy s5 from 2014 fall from the sky the otherday and into a park thankfully was closed off for construction. I think someone dropped it from the condo above. I climbed the fense to get into the park and found a samsung s5 in the dirt, unfortunately not battery, the Gods must be crazy!
I've been using mobile phones for years as web servers, wifi routers, for running computations, downloading torrents. The funny thing is the raspberry pi costs like 50+$ and has nothing more but a 4x1.5GHz CPU, max 4GB of ram and wifi+bt. For that price you can actually buy a slightly damaged s8-10 phone that bas a huge battery, 4G modem, 8 core CPU, 4-8GB RAM, lots of drive space and many more. It also uses a lot less power on standby.
How do you make a phone into a server?
@@loopingdope you just install Termux and inside it you install the regular server stuff like SSH, nginx etc. The only actual limitation is that if the phone is not rooted, you have to use port numbers higher than 1024
@@loopingdopegood question
Me too , i personally used droidian to convert the phone into a linux based server and settled it up with tailscale so that I can ssh into it securely and make it do whatever I want
@@loopingdope I think you could just figure it out how to run Linux or something. Otherwise I would look at some sort of terminal applications or a virtual machine.
Smartphones have: accelerometer, gyroscope, which can be used as a horizon level or motion sensor, thermometer, camera, microphone, compass, gps, light sensor, fingerprint scanner, retina scanner (in Samsung), NFC reader, fm radio in some models, Internet access (online radio, weather forecast, transfer of files to the server, for example, video from a surveillance camera, etc), barometer, SD-card, SIM-card and other features.
Yeah. But not every function is available for diy. Fingerprint scanner and "retina" scanner. They are locked. I have no clue what phone that has retina scanner. Not even iPhone.
@@LordGryllwotth it could be possible to use the face id sensor on the iphone! it's a great 3d scanner and there are external apps that use it to create 3d models
Sorry, not "retina", but iris scanner. Samsung S9 has it. It seems to me that these functions can be used with a working smartphone.
@@LordGryllwotth thats easy dude! I use OpenCV for that! As long as you know programming! You can use any hardware on the phone! Vibrator, camera, gyro, accelerometer....
I miss when IR Blasters were more common...
Using perf board kind of genius actually, i never thinking of that before.Thanks for the tips.
Yeah was blown away with 🎉 that part. I work with Android devices so the rest was more fun than blowing my mind.
Lovely demonstrator project, this would be perfect for turning an old phone into a wireless security camera that could operate a pan/tilt mount 😁
Sounds like a useful application.
@@DoctorVoltKönntest Du Dich daran versuchen? Klingt spannend!
Probably my old phone is faster than a raspberry. And it is impossible to find a 4G/5G sim module for microcontrollers but we can use our old mobile phones. This is awesome.
You can attach a simple arduino board the same way and communicate it through serial connection. It will expand wastly the IO ports and you can use the phones camera and muscle to do harder stuffs.
Also there is firmata. A library to arduino which allows you to "remotely" (using serial comms) configure and control the pins. With it you don't need to write separate code to the arduino each time you modify something in your code in the phone regardles if you want to use more ports.
Exactly. I tried this to make an Remote Controlled RC car, but instead of buying the modules for the connectivity, camera, etc. I just simply hooked up an old Android that has a mobile data connectivity then create an android app that connects to a remote server that can communicate with the arduino serial. Works flawlessly until I accidentally crashed the RC car into a parked car which caused the charging port to broke off lmao.
very cool. can pls give a bit more details on that?
very cool. can pls give a bit more details on that?
My Galaxy S4 was one of my favourite phones ever precisely because it was so easy to disassemble. I woke up one morning to discover I'd tipped a glass of water over it in the night and fried and USB port. Five minutes on eBay to source a replacement (whose postage was more expensive than the board) and I was back up and running twenty minutes after it arrived. Strongly suspect that my next phone will be one that promotes this sort of sustainability over being 3% lighter or whatever.
CMF started a revolution..but only time will tell..
Get a Fairphone 5 then.
The only problem with Fairphone is that they don't use top of the line SoCs.
nokia phones are doing good repairability wise even xiaomi phones too tbh and you also could flash gsi/custom roms on both of them for basically 10+ years of software updates
My S4 has been in the washing machine. Twice. It still works, it is running a boroscope, hardware plus app, in my motorcycle workshop. One of my favorite phones ever.
get once of those CMF phones
Caveat is that sometimes phones behave strangely when you supply constant voltage to the battery pins, since they seem to expect voltage to go higher or lower over time as the battery exhausts itself. I think I've seen that some models of phone will strangely report the "battery's charge" declines until it hits 0 and then shut down. Depends on the model of phone; sometimes it might expect there to be a thermistor there, or BSI, or who knows what. Sometimes you might have to try and harvest an old battery's charge/control board and solder your power input to that as an intermediary, so that the phone at least thinks a proper battery is indeed inserted.
IThinkTheBatteryChipDestroysItselfIfIfBateryIsDisconected,FromTheChip.
@@ovidius2000why do you type like that, it's hard to read
@@ovidius2000also no lol
@@king_james_official CanYouEvenBlameHimThough?HeJussTryinaMakeANameForHimself.
That's exactly what would keep me from doing a serious project with a phone: There is so much stuff on there over which you have no control. And rooting the phone and replacing all the software looks like a lot of work.
This ins one of the most amazing way of using old phones! Congrads!
I did a similar project were i used the display of the phone and some photoresistors to control a rc car. Right now i have 10 old smartphones lying around waiting to be used.
Now i can turn my old phone into a drone computer
Or even FPV. 😮
I thought of the same idea but I caught not do it
@@EmmanuelBanaheneAdamnor-hn8ej why so?
Latency…
I had a similar idea and created a ground drone with an old phone. The fun part is that you can turn on the mobile data and control it from another continent.
This is the concept i have always wondered if it would be possible. Thank you Doc.
Old phones were worthless before this video
Unless you know what a phone is.
A small computer.
you can run 3D printers with old phones with octo4a...
@@Normy0000 connect multiple old phones and run a cluster compute , though you need a laptop or PC and actual problems to handle useless if you are norme, though you can make a farm and advertise for game afk farming XD
There was a neato vid of a guy made a laptop body and added a phone to make a home made Chromebook. I thought it was a good use for an old phone.
or you could sell it back to scraps collector. it is worth more if the condition is good. nice change of money
Thank you for this video, you gave me an idea what to use for my old Android 6 mobile phones.
Watching from Manila PHILIPPINES
Mabuhay!
What ideas if u may share?
People don't usually recognize that phones are fully fledged computers.
Plenty do, not many work out what can be done.
we do, but those are vendor-locked devices, hard to put into versatile use
not everyone is a nerd bro
@@moetocafeNot just vender locked though, there are a number of things Android itself locks you out of doing without root, it'd be like Windows not giving users administrator access, the only reason we have sideloading is because Google allows it.
@@vgamesx1 you are right. I think the area, where we miss FOSS the most is exactly the smartphones.
I have the same idea but you made the video first, good job, I've actually did this in production several times and it worked very well
Why not posting the link to your video when you have done it, may be with a different application?
Great idea for old phones lying around.
Android is in full control of the hardware, meaning it will force your application to stop at random weird moments, that's why it can't be used for anyting reliable. Imagine you have built a drone using old android phone, you have evrything, hd camera, gps, lte, gyro, lot of ram, space and cpu power, just that your drone might just stop responding because android will just kill the app that controls it. That's the problem.
Rooted phones is an alternative
android can be configured to run in different modes. Kiosk mode makes whole device locked to one single app which can't be killed or terminated and awlays stay in control. Rooting is the ultimate option.
I love the idea! I think I need to buy an FT232 breakout board.
Your idea is great. I want to share my idea with you. We all know that bluetooth headphones have a very small receiver. It is convenient for all sorts of crafts, robots, and toys. It has a battery and a charge controller on board. If we make an application that will encode commands into sound of a certain frequency and transmit via bluetooth, and on the receiver side we put an arduino that receives the sound and decodes it into commands, then we can make a universal platform for controlling toys and gadgets. We get rid of problems with switching android - arduino. And the sketch for arduino will be a few lines. How do you like the idea?
Yeah, nice idea if you have an old BT speaker or headphones you can take it from. But I think you need to run some FFT analysis on the Arduino to distinguish the frequencies. And that might slow down the actual application. I would rather use a HC-05 Bluetooth module or an ESP32 with Bluetooth. And a power bank would make a good battery with charge controller.
I like it, but I don't have time right now. Also, it's possible to use cheap universal BT receivers and program the BT device on the Arduino accordingly. ESP32 would also work over Wi-fi, besides BT.
There's no need to encode/decode sound streaming, it's much simpler than that. Just use an HC-05 or HC-06 module, there are dozens of similar projects on RUclips.
this is because android phones and rasp PI's share a common foundation called linux kernel. The android OS is a modified linux kernel, while the rasp pi OS is also a modified Debian distro.
You mean Rasbian I suppose. The Raspberry Pi itself isn't an OS.
@@NorthernChimp yes yes forgive my bad english😅 I was referring to the OS used by rasp pi which is Rasbian, a modified debian distro for pi.
I've always wanted to see this happen!
Thank you for making my dream come true!!
I like the idea of the video of using old phone in projects. Cz it's not a waste it also contain a processor in it. 🙌🙌
Nice! Make a turret to mount on and then also controls for water and food dispensing so can have an audio video interface with camera control to call your pet when food and water is dispensed as well as lower their anxiety when one is away for a few days at a time. Awesome work! Such a waste the old phones are and such great device capabilities like even as a webcam alone.
intresting. i would use this to implement something like i2c protocoll to get a few more i/O ports. also there are a lot of i2c sensors out there. also the cameras, gyro and a lot of other stuff can be used in the app...
im not sure what projekts i will do but i will try this.
Sure, there are also USB to I2C converter ICs available that you can interface with this method.
@@DoctorVoltcheck information about GPIO ports on smartphone's mainboard. You can connect gamepad stick or external GSM modem without using USB OTG
Do you got any update?? Haha i’ve been curious about that too. For the serial to I2C can use CH341T module and for IO expansion board can use PCF8575
Crazy to see that Android Studio still supports Android 3. This is unthinkable in the Microsoft world.
@@MetalheadAndNerd wayy too useful lol!
I think i'mma start learnin android software developin.
I don't want to be a Microsoft defender, but their backward compability is generally reallly good
@@SalimShahdiOff Yes, but only for PC software. Anything web application related has been built on fixed versions of open source components that cannot be updated, have hundreds of dependencies on other fixed versions of open source components and some of then cannot even be installed in parallel to other versions of said components.
When you are maintaining or extending software that has been written a couple of years ago chances are you need a separate virtual machine for the development tools, have to dig up components out of dubious archive websites because the used versions are out of support, no more officially available and the documentation has been taken off the web long time ago.
@@MetalheadAndNerd oh I didn't know about the web app hell you're describing to be honest
but the phone in the video is not android 4.X ish holo?
I've been using an old Samsung S8 and two S10s for a portable baby monitor and two media centers for years now. The media center capability of Samsung DeX is amazing - you just slap a HDMI hub to the phone, connect it to a TV or an unused monitor and you have the most advanced android smart TV you can imagine, for next to zero money. You can also connect a keyboard and a mouse to it, and with a bluetooth app - operate it remotely with another phone.
i do it more simpler: use serial app on phone, and control arduino/esp like that. Easier, reliable, dont need specific apps, just a serial one.
This way you can only use the screen of the phone
But in this case you also need to program the Arduino to react on these serial commands. And you cannot build your custom UI.
Damn, so glad I found this video.
Been really getting into micro.controllers recently, but had no idea phones could be so useful for projects... I have four phones sitting in a box, waiting until I could find a use for them..
So many interesting comments from viewers too
You can use the USB for charging the phone and a Bluetooth module on a microcontroller to transmit and receive RS232 type serial communication. I did that once so I could switch the solar power to my floodlight remotely from my website when I was living on a small island.
sounds like a wild story
Oh wow, this video was informative, short and in a very structured way. Appreciate the time you took to create this. I hope to give it a try.
it would be cool if you sold this as a kit to convert existing smartphones as SBCs!
Even the older phones wont charge nor work with a simple plus and minus supply on its battery connector! You have to put a resistor between the battery sensor pin. Out of my mind I think its a 2.4k resistor or something around that. I have very old phones and none will work by simply connectingn plus and minus to the battery pins.
The resistor you mentioned is actually a thermal resistor that prevents the battery from being charged when it is too hot or too cold. But as in my case I don't want to charge the phone, it also works without it.
@@DoctorVolt As I said. Many phones wont even take the power from the plus and minus without the response of the battery. So all phones that I have wont even work without the resistor.
@@Stinktierchen So I was just lucky that with Galaxy S2 it works without a resistor. But good to know anyway.
@@DoctorVolt Actually for me it worked on a Samsung S3, J5 and Huawei P8 lite with the power wires soldered to the battery BMS (I removed the battery cell because it was dead and the phone had many other problems anyway).
@@Sireoja of course this would work in principle almost every time.
best use for an old mobile I have ever seen awesome
I've converted some phones into personal encrypted walky-talkys, scanning receiver, radio signal direction finder, All wth Waterfall Display.
Using an IR LED in place of the Torch/Flash LED, I made an "Everything" Learning Remote Control.
Wow😮
Very nice! Was just thinking about using usb interface to controll my circuit. So happy you implemented it here! Very inspiring!
Great innovation. I bet most people have an old phone or two lying around.
Next up, install an RTOS or a minimal android to reduce power and processing wastage.
Aosp based rom without gapps last way longer
Можно убрать Android и написать свой простой графический интерфейс для ядра Linux. Про этот процесс писал в своём текстовом блоге Monobogdan. Ещё он использовал порты GPIO на материнской плате смартфона, чтобы подключить стик геймпада и внешний модем GSM
Raspberry pi: ready to go IMMEDIATELY.
This: ready to go after a few days of frustration and convolution.
You have to buy a lot of components for the pi that come built into a phone. Battery, touchscreen, accelerometer etc. Also it gives a use for old phones that struggle to have a purpose otherwise. I think it's great
Raspberry pi = expensive
This = free
Do not assume everyone has money for their projects
so funny raspberry pi supposed to be cheap 😂
Termux gives you a Linux-y environment to run software in, it even can make use of sensors and phone specific hardware if you get the f-droid version, so if you have a mostly software project that could benefit from something you can easily find in a phone, that may be a good starting point.
There should be a standardized/popularized app & PCB to do this with old Android and possibly Apple devices, so DIYers don't have to do all of this themselves.
Make it
So make it happen
@@chasewatkins3096 @lshxggyl There are many different ports, phones, and reasons that people will want to use a RasPi. And if you're just using it as a server, none of this is needed.
YOu had me at the custom board to replace the batteries. That alone is worth a SUBSCRIBE! Continued Success!
Great video! I have a few old android phones. I want to create an annunciator for my airplane. Adding a voice library or just play recordings to the audio system will get me the audio. Attaching it to some sensors and a shut up button, software and boom! an annunciator.
Okay. Open questions:
- What about soldering to some pads to turn the phone on and off?
- What if the phone doesn't want constant voltage? Seems to be especially a problem when booting up but I also heard about devices where the percentage still decreases over time... I think the temperature contact(s) should somehow be taken care off...
- What happens if somebody puts in a charger at the USB port while the phone is powered by constant voltage instead of by a battery? Will that just be fine?
Ideally I would like to have a solution that allows to either connect some random battery (of the same type ofc to keep it simple...) or a power supply thus that a phone that stays at one place for the majority of time could also be taken with to somewhere if necessary.
1. Is safe to connect 5v to the battery terminal, I've tried on lots of device
2. You can use a esp32 or stm or whatever as uart to gpio adapter
(Or use the phone as uart HMI touch screen)
I once used a Bluetooth serial device as a control input, which might be useful if your phone doesn't support OTG
@@dafoex all phone after android 5 support OTG by default, especially USBC directly call for bidirectional support, it is(at least in theory) more reliable, less delay, and maybe faster if you need it
I been saying this for years and nobody listens
Sorry, what?
Obviously, you should've have made a video instead! 🤷
A lot of people can say, but only a few can do.
The main problem is phones being phones. Android likes to kill apps randomly, not all of them support USB OTG, and aging hardware can and will fail - especially batteries. iOS is also a problem since it is so locked down, you can't just connect an arbitrary USB device to it, and I can't imagine serial over Bluetooth is easy, either. Also iPhones are heavy to make users think they are more expensive than they actually are, so there's no hope if you have weight constraints such as a flying project.
Software stuff is probably your best bet if you want to use an old phone. Install Termux and get a Linux-y environment you can SSH into.
That would be cool to use that for a fancy on-off switch and diagnostic tool for a geiger counter.
Some phones need a 10k resistor connected between ground and the middle pin to fool the battery temperature sensing or else the phone won't start up. Also, some phones need a constantly connected USB charger as well, otherwise the non-existing battery can "discharge" over time, because the percentage gets calculated by the phone's dumb software. So, if the phone starts becoming warm with a connected charger, simply connect the "battery" positive trough a diode instead. If this is not enough, connect a 16V 1000µF & 10V 2200µF capacitor between the "battery" positive and negative for some additional capacity. ⚡
I made my old "Lenovo A2010" running from a 4.5V mains adaptor this way, because I only used it in my room and I didn't wanted to make the aftermarket battery into a pillow over time. It's stable, it successfully shows the clock since months, but it can't work in case of a power outage. 📱
Nice video. I actually use old phones to watch movie in bed, but I also use them as my TV remotes, usually by casting content seamlessly across the network. With a vnc my phone becomes a wireless print server for my wireless printer. The list goes on...
Interesting demonstration. Its easier to use an esp8266 wifiAP for $5 and do the same thing with the web browser. But I get the point of this video.
True but maybe you get more ram, camera, gps with the phone.
But yeah, host a webpage with an openAP with esp is easy!!
Would love to see more videos like this. I have a semi dead S9+ I'm using as a webcam and a few other phones lying around. Would love to use them for something useful :)
this is amazing i have many old phones,
Use guitar pcik for separating shells. No marks, easier.
Damn music is so jolly i was dancing while learning 😂
Thankyou! So succinct in your explanations. Your ideas are worthy of sharing.
Very true! Pi 5 is slow and using old process. The thermal is really bad on Pi 5.
@Brain_pocketer
1. For some tests, 3Ghz Pi5 is slower than 2.2 Ghz Pi4B. And much slower than RK3588 2.4Ghz.
2. Pi 5 is 16nm, G99 is 6nm. Pi 5 is really HOT!
BTW, the TCO of G99 is much lower than Pi 5. I love G99 very much.
i was waiting for this video damn, youtube algo makes me reach you
It is possible to visualize the use of a touch-screen phone to control a greenhouse. I imagine that it will have a lot of applicability for rural production. You can control a mushroom greenhouse, all from an old phone. I imagine that you would have the graphs, numbers and controls at your fingertips. Very interesting.
Everything is okay until he solders the battery and directly connects with the branch power supply, he can do the same with esp32 and send data using wifi or with bluetooth, and doesn't even need any soldering or opening the phone.
Can I do this with now adays android phone?
@@davesmith-pj3dg ruclips.net/video/CXw1Z5V42NY/видео.htmlsi=RuDCD8uB4KPNfimv
It's a wireless module with Bluetooth and wifi so I believe it would be possible to communicate with the phone using the USB port on the phone.
Comparing a used android phone to a raspberry pi is like comparing a used kenworth semi truck with a trailer to a brand new base model f150 that doesnt even come with a bed on its frame. The fact that a used phone even has a battery and a decent screen makes it way better depending on what project your doing.
Yo! Great stuff brother ! Keep it up 💪🏻🔥
Every Maker would argue.. Damn.. why the heck did i trash my old crap phone ..
This reminds me of the old Android "ioio" boards... Nice Work!
brilliant! and I LOVE the little 'audio bling' comedy! GREAT subject! I guess I better start learning Android....
Instructive, thank you! You just earned a new subscriber.
The battery supply part alone was worth the watch
You are Gunther Hermann from Deus Ex. Awesome Indie Bro
Nice reuse of old hardware! Thanks for the video
bro used s2 flagship as 5 dollar raspberry
Who needs opening tools when you have calcium.
Strong nails as a tool, definitely been there!
I'm not sure why, so bear with me, but I clearly see someone watching this video 10 years from now, from a hard drive labeled 'very useful - don't waste' in a bunker while hiding from the UN.
Thanks for posting something very useful and not to be wasted (I'm going to download this one and put it on the HD, even though I've only used a soldering iron twice in my life).
I'm wanting to make a device similar to the Solid Eye from MGS4, and I was planning to use a Raspberry Pi, but since I already have a old moto e5 with all components, might as well use it. I'm pretty new to this type of science tho
That's Arduino level, not Pi. You can control electeonics with it, but you can't use it as a computer cause all the parts are heavily integrated (unlike RPi).
Guess you could use any phone to program a microcontroller arduino or such..but I thought raspberry pi has a microcontroller chip you can buy also. The phone got a nice display interface though.
Amazing video! Great content! Thanks so much!
Excellent presentation. Thank you.
Phones running the mainline linux kernel with a distro like ubuntu/mobian replaced the raspi for me years ago.
My oneplus 6 has 8 cores 8gb ram 128gb ufs storage no pi can compete against that
Du bist ein Macher 💪
Danke für dieses Video 😌
I really love your idea, Sir.
Nice work. You can just use OTG adapter with charging input instead of DC/DC converter. The battery is needed for UPS
Yes, but this only powers the attached devices, not the phone itself.
@@DoctorVolt yes , but type c phone you can charge it and powers the attached device. OTG with two usb connectors, one for input ( charging) the other one for the device
Omg. You are amazing. I learnt soo much. Thanks
We could use this as a fast iot board, something as simple as hosting apps via ssh ing into the phone and deploying docker there
So much more is possible but I wanna try using an old phone as a server
They have 4-8 cores, 1-4 gig rams, a very efficient arm processor, builtin wifi and ble
Thanks for Demonstrating this.. (Very Nice to Know) 👍👍
with rs485 modbus i/o device you can read digital and analog ios via modbus read coil write contact and read / write holding register commands. you will need usb tu rs485 converter for about 5 usd
This music makes me happy, its like Christmas music
This is the fuckin' video i was searching for, an year ago..!
This is the kind of video internet need
Perfektné! Ďakujem za myšlienku
PostmarketOS is best for this.
Curious, have you actually tried implementing it on an android device? It sounds very interesting.
you can use it on very limited number of specific models of phones.
The only fully supported are just two - Purism Librem5 and PinePhone.
You can also use the aux/headset jack as a low rate I/O interface.
Never throwing an old phone again with this one
i never throw my old phone they all still work today 😂
I don't know why, but now I want some Schnitzel and beer at the Oktoberfest.
Can You make a video on how to connect a laptop display with an old smartphone motherboard
All my old phones have a purpose. My old destroyed S8 acts as my power efficient Desktop (I overclocked it too), then my old Galaxy S5 acts as dashcam in my car. I got more ofc.
Hackers unite! This is a fresh take actually. It's been a while since ive seen anyone coming up with new innovative projects
Great video,Thx Karl
Nice project. The use of a FTDI USB adapter is rather limited. But what would be really cool is to move to an Arduino Nano and implement a firmware that lets the pins / functions mapping be set from Android app and then command executed remotely. This would allow the implementation of analogRead/Write and maybe also some basic I2C functionality (like reading / writing bytes).
I was also thinking of that. But finally I decided for the solution that's more effortless to implement. (You only need to program the phone, not both phone and MCU)
this is very cool i been wanting to get into this kind of stuff and arduino and such
You are on to something big here
It's a very nice ideia! But the problem is that the phone like a general purpose computer,. It's not a dedicated device. For example if the power runs out, the Android will restart and you will be in the home screen.... not in the app that control the USB.
You can use Tasker to autostart apps.
I saw a samsung galaxy s5 from 2014 fall from the sky the otherday and into a park thankfully was closed off for construction. I think someone dropped it from the condo above. I climbed the fense to get into the park and found a samsung s5 in the dirt, unfortunately not battery, the Gods must be crazy!