An electric BBQ grill from a washing machine, a peeping camera from an old smartphone and a mining farm … What do these things have in common? The answer has been found!
Photo Rmnt.ru
Every six months or a year, manufacturers of filling for our electronic devices launch new models of chipsets and video cards, screens for smartphones and memory chips. The release of these new products is often accompanied by a transition to a different technological process, and old lithographic stencils, which cost immeasurably more than if they were printed on the largest bills of the most expensive currency in the world, are no longer needed. Old production lines undergo deep modernization or are simply dismantled, they are the embodiment of direct losses for the manufacturer. About two years ago (or so) I already said that a significant part of the losses are associated with quality control, and these costs begin to occur already at the design stage in the form of technical errors that 'catch up' and coolly thin out the annual balance of the foundry in the midst of production. And yet there is a difference in what exactly the chip maker, budget chipset or computing Godzilla churns out for top smartphones. We've seen these budget solutions on the market for years and sometimes it seems like they will live forever. Snapdragon 210 and 410, MediaTek MT6580 and MT6750 are just some examples of such long-livers. On the photomodules market, everything happens a little differently, apparently due to the even higher cost of manufacturing a photographic matrix. New photomodules from OmniVision, Sony and Samsung fall into the flagships, and the old ones are produced for some time, falling first into the average budget, then into phones and tablets with strange names, going into an endless period of extinction in the cheapest DVRs. All these examples can be brought to a common denominator – these are electronic components that were produced in the largest batches. 'Most massive' also means the most advanced production process, with all the necessary corrections to the design of both the product and its production line. But even the “most massive” ones eventually disappear into eternal nothing. Any zealous owner, even one who does not have a vegetable garden or a house in the village, will never throw away a working thing, even in the country of forever young marketing. And if not thrown away, then how to apply? We will talk about this in today's issue.
What do people do
In addition to a separate type of smartphone user, popularly known as the collector-Plyushkin, there are also the most common ones. And here's what they do with old (or unnecessary) gadgets:
Stall
Old smartphones and tablets will perfectly replace many stationary multimedia devices, if they can still run at least one function. A tablet, which is a screen in a case, can easily replace an Internet TV or a photo frame, and a smartphone – a music center, if you screw it to the speakers with tape. In any case, the thing becomes stationary and requires a constant connection to the outlet for its work. Here are some interesting solutions found on the Internet:
Just an electronic clock. Photo Pikabu.ru
You can remove the broken touchscreen from the tablet, use the mouse to start developer mode and enable the Active Display function (so that the screen never goes out). The idea of converting a tablet into a photo frame will never get old.
Photo Pikabu.ru
We print a new case on a 3D printer and now the smartphone turns into a cool peephole. Photo Gadgetstyle.com.ua
A budget music center made of cardboard, glue and an old smartphone. Photo Samesound.ru
If there is very little left of the tablet, then with the help of skillful hands, you can make a USB Wi-Fi adapter for a PC. Photo Full-chip.net
Sooner or later, this will happen with every gadget, which the owner did not raise his hand to throw away. This is the most worthy use for devices aged Android 4.4 and younger, which can no longer be considered so secure that you can insert a SIM card into them and go online without antivirus. And they no longer receive updates to the most popular applications.
Carry and carry with them
A smartphone of almost any degree of wear and tear can be used as a 3G (LTE) modem, a navigator for a car or a USB flash drive. If the smartphone supports OTG connection, it can act as an external USB drive, even a bootable one, for installing operating systems or using the Live CD (I recommend using the DriveDroid application).
Navigator from the tablet. Photo A.d.-cd.net
Many launchers have appeared on Google Play for using Android devices in the car. The screenshot shows the elegant Car Launcher AGAMA.
Sometimes it seems that non-standard use of smartphones and tablets is limited only by our imagination. Be sure to tell in the comments if you managed to attract the old gadget to do useful work.
What the manufacturer does
The second life of old chipsets
Older production lines of the most common electronic components are relatively easy to adapt to produce products with slightly reduced functionality. Take the conditional Snapdragon 410, turn off the lines for working with a SIM card, give it a new name and send it to the developers of smart speakers. Most likely, this is exactly what happened with the 'latest' Qualcomm IoT chipset of the QCS400 series, in the older versions of which the manufacturer graciously left the Adreno 306 video accelerator.
This is just one example of a large manufacturer's responsible approach to the money of its shareholders. However, each of us can find a similar example inside our home Wi-Fi router.
New life for old miner servers
Most modern mining farms are servers based on specialized video cards or fully utilitarian ASIC systems. And if the owners of the latter, after the full development of the meaning of bitcoin, will only have to throw unnecessary pieces of hardware in the trash, then the owners and manufacturers of the 'heap of video cards' have options. Here I propose not to discuss a recent report from one of the largest cryptocurrency 'managers' – Bitwise Asset Management, which explicitly states that 95% of all existing bitcoins are imaginary, but focus on hardware.
Some 'mining' video cards, such as the Nvidia P106-100 (consumer counterpart – Nvidia GTX 1060), which completely lacks video outputs, can be used for installation in a regular computer. Our good Chinese friends are so kind that they share links to modified drivers and give good advice just to get rid of the unnecessary. And in the end, the difference with the cost of a regular GTX1060 is about 20-30% in favor of the consumer, which will help save economical ones. In the fall of last year, Nvidia announced testing of the Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service, which apparently took place on the basis of servers of the GTX 1xxx generation that were not purchased by miners last year. Last week, the company announced its readiness to launch a service based on RTX generation servers, which miners did not buy this year (personal opinion of the author).
By itself, the ability to play complex games from the cloud on any device is not interesting to everyone, but its use to dispose of unsold components and generate additional profit is respectable.
A server for mining cryptocurrency based on 40 old Samsung Galaxy smartphones. More details can be found here: Futurism.com
However, a similar role could be played by the new Qualcomm SiP1 'semi-chipset semi-system', which we discussed last week and whose appearance takes on new meaning in the light of reuse.
Conclusion
В сети появилось видео отвязки (UNLOCK) от оператора AT&T новейшего разгибающегося смартфона Samsung Galaxy Fold F900U. A distant observation of the process led to the question: does it not seem to you that the revolutionary smartphone is most like a grandmother's reticule, all that is missing is a shiny lock and carrying handles?
A groove has already appeared in the place where the screen bends, and for this reason the unlocking of the screen does not work every time. Is it possible to reuse such a construction? Maybe like an ashtray or a powder box?
I suggest in the comments to discuss the raised topic of reuse of old things in the broadest possible way, to share your experiences and thoughts. For photos of hand crafting like without looking?.