Submitted 4 weeks ago by tinosaurier@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/09/self-hosting-a-cluster-on-old-phones/
Yeah. I get it. It’s good for old devices to be useful for years to come.
What about the battery though? Having a device with an old battery plugged in the socket 24/7 is a fire hazard.
I would love to use my old nexus 10 with this perfect screen today. There is still no way to use a mobile device without a battery plugged in…
Use a smart power switch.
Battery level drops below say 20% - turn switch on and start charging.
Battery level goes above 80% - turn switch off.
For Android, you could use something like the Tasker app to do the monitoring and switching.
This doesn’t address the fire hazard at all.
Just take out the battery and keep it plugged in?
Unlike laptops, many phones simply won’t turn on without a battery connected.
I guess it’s better if you set up charge limiting, so that after reaching x percent it continues to run from the wall, but not charge the battery anymore. not all phones support charge limiting though, and even less suports idle charging, some have idle charging buggy and if it doesn’t work right after boot you have to reboot it to fix it. charge control almost always requires rooting if android.
but I guess its the same with laptops, except there even the chargers get hot
I used to use old phones (Nexus 6P, Galaxy Nexus, Moto X) as security cameras, stopped for exactly this reason. They all got really warm, even with the screen off, and I was uneasy about it. IIRC my Gnex removable battery started expanding a bit! That’s when I stopped using them for it.
You can use battery powered device without the battery plugged in. I’ve never built capacitor bank for a more modern mobile device but its probably possible with off the shelf boards. The last one I built was years ago for a dentist office. It was a mp3 player they used for the hold music. Pulled the bad battery and built a fairly small capacitor bank. The only complication was getting the right resister for the third terminal. In the case of the mp3 player it was a temperature sensor. Modern phones use this channel to communicate battery info which might complicate things a bit.
Getting pmOS to work on an op6t has been an exercise in … patience and not using colorful language.
I have already tried Plasma Mobile and the Purism UIs… which one is really the most feature complete for devices?
What’s been rough about it, the install process, setup afterwards, or stuff being broken? I have an old 6T and was considering this for fun, but… Might skip if it’s not fun lol
Every single install I’ve tried of it feels “half finished”. There’s bugs and missing features everywhere… but that’s on just two of the interfaces. I have yet to try them all.
Really cool idea! Shame that none of my old devices seem to have working postmarketOS images, but I’m tempted to try this with an old phone off ebay if I can find a cheap-enough one.
Eh, I’d rather sell old flagship phones on and have them be used as a phone for a while longer…
This is something i’ve wanted to do for a while. It’s cool! An easy vpn endpoint or a file server i can just drop where i need it.
Repelle@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Some old Slashdot vet not only imagined a Beowulf cluster of those, but actually went out and did it. Respect.