Thread

1. noahnathan25 · 1790859627 · focus · HN ↗

   You could just use an old second-hand phone for under $60. You’d get a built-in battery, much more RAM, and a screen included. For the output, just use a $3 ESP32 connected over Wi-Fi or USB. Seems like a much better deal for a lot of projects.

   1. Reubachi · 1790865614 · focus · HN ↗

      Making any recent second-hand smartphone a SBC-equivilent field computer is always a custom job/not scalable.

      OF course, that shouldn't matter for most tinkerer jobs like a CarPi. But anecdotally, I tried using my old iphone 13 (idk why I tried this) and then a couple old galaxies for my car project taking data from bluetooth dongle and relaying to a custom gui I made. Of course also dealing with power cycles and screen, data trasnfer etc.

      Very, very quickly it became easier to justify buying a SBC for the same project

      1. noahnathan25 · 1790866950 · focus · HN ↗

         The goal of the Raspberry Pi was to have a SoC that could run Linux on a very cheap board, but that's no longer the case. There are cheaper options on the market today... and if you really need to use Linux... an old smartphone can be a testing solution. I also recently used a Xiaomi router (it has little internal memory) to run Linux (OpenWrt) and do some testing
      2. alex7o · 1790869246 · focus · HN ↗

         Yes but also find a phone that is not top of the line and can be flashed with a custom ROM/kernel like linage OS, or Ubuntu touch, postmakret OS, then you can customize and have your pie and eat it too. Since you won't be needing the phone to have security for you banking stuff
   2. wds · 1790869747 · focus · HN ↗

      For a bit more physical space, used laptops have the same and more.

      I run a headless laptop as a server and it works great, and just sips power. It didn't have Ethernet built-in, so I just replaced the WiFi card with one and it worked just fine (and also let me panel mount the connector for a DIY 1U enclosure).

      While I did not get it myself, I recently saw a business laptop I was hawking with 8GB of RAM and a relatively modern CPU sell for less than $50 on eBay. All that was wrong with it was a bad back panel; just some broken plastic which I wouldn't have been using regardless.

      I could see myself running a whole rack of headless laptops in the future. It's more likely than me buying a single new Pi at these prices.

   3. HeyLaughingBoy · 1790869841 · focus · HN ↗

      [sigh] I've lost track of the number of times that I've suggested that instead of an ESP32 with small TFT screen for some web or BLE enabled project that doesn't require any I/O, you could just use a cheap phone or tablet and make life much easier. I'm downvoted every single time. I guess some people take pride in doing things the hard way.

      1. subscribed · 1790887776 · focus · HN ↗

         Maybe because old phone is not a replacement really? It will work for a very few of the projects people want to run on ESP32, and it has all the downsides the tiny ESPs don't have.

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