Repurposing smart phones

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MadEngineer

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#148956 6-Jul-2014 19:16

So I've got an N95, a Motorola Defy and an iPhone 4 that are just sitting in a draw doing nothing. Would love to turn them into motion sensitive cameras or something. Probably easier with the Defy if I was able to get shell access and install the equivalent of apt-get install motion. The iPhone would make an ideal device to hide away in my car but I'd hate to know what it would do to the car battery and not to mention data charges.

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deadlyllama

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#1082017 6-Jul-2014 19:22

I used to have a GPS tracker in my car, and a car PC. No more, alas.

I'd love to get a smartphone that could be configured to turn on/off when the charger power was turned on/off. That'd be great for embedding in a car somewhere.

Another use would be to plug one into some speakers and using it for playing music. We'll probably do that with one of our phones after the next upgrade...

Dynamic

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#1082047 6-Jul-2014 20:13

Sell them? Your trash is someone else's treasure....

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richms

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#1082051 6-Jul-2014 20:18

The draw of a full smartphone on a car charger is negligible to a car battery. I have left 2 phones in my center console on charge for 2 and a bit weeks and the car started without any hesitation after that time.

Richard rich.ms

turnin

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#1082093 6-Jul-2014 21:47

deadlyllama: I used to have a GPS tracker in my car, and a car PC. No more, alas.

I'd love to get a smartphone that could be configured to turn on/off when the charger power was turned on/off. That'd be great for embedding in a car somewhere.

Another use would be to plug one into some speakers and using it for playing music. We'll probably do that with one of our phones after the next upgrade...

There are plenty of tracking apps on the appstore, or you could probably make one with tools like B4a. You need to make a service that goes off say once per minute and checks for gps movement , check the gps errors with against an appropriate force. Your normal cellphones wifi or nfc tags could be used (initially only) to validate you, so unless moving or told via txt/push etc it goes back to sleep for a minute. But if the car is moving without you, it can then sms/email/dial/tweet/record etc . You can configure services to start when the phone boots and configure apps to "keep awake" but actually turning on the device I'm not sure about.

Polling the gps obviously drains the cellphone battery as would image recognition/video/accelerometer and definitely the screen would want to be blank etc ,but if you just take power straight from battery-via a fuse of course then the device may never shut down. In theory.

You would probably want to uninstall some of the background services and existing apps both from a data usage and reliability perspective. If you were just sending gps coordinates to the web the datacost would be very small, also consider txt's at least as a back up as they seem to be easier to get through when the coverage is marginal.

If everyone put their old smartphones on a poll at the end of their streets/driveways you could run a pretty awesome neighbourhood watch scheme and potentially some sort of a network, for a lot of purposes the problem a cellphone has is actually its $value, but a cellphone that might have a cracked screen still has numerous other sensors from video + still cameras, noise detectors, vibration, on a large scale these can be pretty useful

MadEngineer

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#1082129 6-Jul-2014 22:55

Dynamic: Sell them? Your trash is someone else's treasure....

i wouldn't wish these devices on anyone. the n95 is ok but a little bit worn in a couple of places, the camera on the iphone4 is stuck and wont focus and the Motorola randomly locks up (especially when taking videos) or overheats which I think is just the usual android silliness.

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Dynamic

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#1082135 6-Jul-2014 23:13

If you decide not to use the iPhone and your sale price is modest, I would be interested in re purposing it as a speedo. The speedo on my motorbike is on the tank, and when I wear a full face helmet it is out of sight, out of mind... An old iphone in a waterproof handlebar mounted case might be ideal.

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tchart

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#1082157 7-Jul-2014 07:57

I use an old android phone as my alarm clock (using Dock Clock). Its great as you can control the brightness etc.

Ive also used an andoid app that turns any old phone into a wireless webcam. The app is called "IP Webcam" - not sure if its available on iOS. The only thing I found is that the phone runs hot and would reboot on occasion, could probably be solved with a small fan.

As for your N95 probably why not use it as a wifi hotspot? Google joiku hotspot - worked great back in the days when I rocked the N95.

MadEngineer

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#1082491 7-Jul-2014 15:46

My current iphone makes a good hotspot, especially when there's a 3gig plan behind it :) but yes it does make a good hotspot, I used it tethered by bluetooth sitting on hotel windowsills around the world with no third party software as it did it out of the box.

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NZtimbo

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#1082495 7-Jul-2014 15:54

Got my old HTC Desire as a Google Music player on my AV Amp...

Tim

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