This blog is running on a recycled Google Pixel 5 (2024)

I have my Pixel 3 magnetically attached to my keyboard, to the left side, next to the tab, caps lock and other keys. It displays a webpage of a grid of buttons which do things when I press them, like inject the current timestamp at the cursor position, toggle my monitors on and off, launch certain apps.

Because I wanted an Elgato Stream Deck but then thought that I have this unused phone.

> I like the idea of using old phones for infrastructure-lite applications, taking advantage of their low power requirements and built-in UPS (which, yes, has its own drawbacks which can only be mitigated to a certain degree).

I'd love to see a..."serverization" kit for some mobile devices, like the "consolized" kits developed for the game boy advance[1]: Extract the mainboard from your phone and extend it by directly interfacing it with external storage, a better power supply and a physical network interface.

[1]https://fingercramp.com/portfolio/gba-consolizer-play-your-f...

Hey, blog author here. Thanks!

I agree that a VM or container doesn't add to the power usage for a homelab that's already running. I kinda did it for fun and being able to run it off solar. I had original plans to turn the lab off at night and then the phone could keep running from battery. But, the homelab became critical infra and has to be always on lol.

The requirement for Ethernet was just for bandwidth consistency. My WiFi network isn't the best.

> why not wifi?

I'm not the author but can speculate. WiFi is higher latency and a bit probabilistic. Like the slowest 1% of requests to the server may take an additional 1000ms or so. And if I was running a blog from a phone I'd want it to be impressively fast. Also an old Android phone may not be able to use modern WiFi standards and it could struggle with the traffic from being on the HN homepage.

One issue I have with doing this is what about security? Many older android phones don't get updates anymore (I'm not sure if a Pixel 5 is still supported, it might be) so I'd be concerned about security vulnerabilities going unpatched especially if the phone is exposed to the internet.

I've had this dream of doing it in Elixir, and use it's capability to easily connect nodes securely together, to add more processing power into the system through by just slapping more phones at it.

If you have to plug it in anyways, may as well power + ethernet.

Are you saying the power required for wifi transmission is lower than the power required for usb?

Also, what's a BA?

For a static site you can get a lot better by dumping it on S3 or Github Pages. Your site uses 0W while not being used since the server was already running, and it consumes no resource usage while not being requested. But yeah an x86 server at home for a static site is awfully inefficient.

Of course it depends on what you consider typical, but x86 can do pretty low power stuff too; n100 systems can idle <10w and 20-30w at full load.

50-100W for equivalent work as a phone from 2020 can do would have been the case with CPUs from at least a decade ago. I should hope that one doesn't burn ~75W to host a few static files if it can also run on a Pi or phone or laptop that draws <20W idle

That's not to say it's not a good idea to make use of the super efficient "Pi" you already have at home in the form of (several, probably) old smartphones! Just that you'd not use it for the same purpose as a gaming desktop that can't idle below 50W

> 400-800 kWh/year savings

The average all-sector U.S. price per kWh is 13.20 cents (source: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...). Even at the high end that’s a savings of $105.60/year, or $8.80/month.

The U.S. poverty line for 2025 is $15,650 for a single person (source: https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/dd73d4f00...). $105.60 is less than one percent of that.

Sure, energy efficiency is great and I would rather have $105.60 than not have it, but it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

[dead]

No but it was reused as a whole. "Recycle" is completely correct. Pedantry failed.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recycle#:~:text=To%20reuse%20...

Recycle is definitely grammatically correct. It's just a different word for re-use.

The worst part of the spicy pillow problem is that even if you remove the battery cell and solder a power supply to the BMS, Android will eventually decide "I must be out of battery by now" and shut itself down. You have to root the device to override this and it is supremely annoying.

Of course if the thing could just run directly off wall power like you suggested, this wouldn't be a problem.

My small army of old android devices are plugged into a USB 'charging station' (multiple USB charging ports off a single plastic device) which in plugged into a smart switch. The smart switch turns on for a couple of hours overnight, to keep the phones charged at least minimally.

Most of the devices also have a custom ROM and are rooted, and using the ACCA app I restrict charging to a maximum of 80% battery capacity.

I had a Samsung Note 5 (released in 2015) that only went spicy maybe 6 months ago. I have a Samsung S9 and a Nokia 6.1 that are both still going strong with fairly recent versions of LineageOS. Both are 2018 phones, so around 6.5 years old (old for phones, but shouldn't be 'electronically' old).

https://www.instructables.com/Power-an-Android-Phone-Without...

You can also buy dummy batteries for certain models online.

Put it in a fireproof box and if it dies it dies.

My concern too. I go check on it about once a week. I definitely need to find something safer.

The easiest way is with a programmable plug, it does not have to be smart, just set it up to charge the phone for 1 or 2 hours at the cheapest, or available by solar, the rest of the day the phone will use battery as usual. Is the battery cooked? Then set it to be half an hour every 4 hours or so.

It's a good phone, but think I need to replace the battery on mine. It's getting to the point that I have to recharge a couple times per day.

This post was made from a refurbished Pixel 5 I scored for ~$250. Just like you, this is easily the best phone I have ever had. I really like the 2020 design philosophy as is it doesn't include features meant to be technologically impressive rather than practical (eg. under-screen finger print reader). Here is to many more years of 2-3 days of use on a charge and good-but-not-great pictures

Similar. I'm going to hold on to my iPhone SE2 (same year, size, mass, touch ID, etc) until it dies.

NAT is the hard problem. I'm tracking this one: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/11563

You can also talk to your ISP (or their competition). My friend negotiated something like +5€/mo for a static IP. We can play Factorio together, yay!

I have a fiber 2.5 gbit connection without static IP. But I run a script on the router that updates the DNS settings when the IP changes, you just have to have a DNS provider that allows you to do that and change ttl.

Plenty of dynamic DNS solutions. TP-link even has one you can set up from their app (not a endorsement, don't know if it is good or bad)