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Junk drawer phone as a music streaming server
- causality0 3y agoTrying to charge it revealed that the charging port was broken. I didn’t want to dig too deeply into the device but I got lucky and was given another S7 with a bad battery Could've taped a dollar store qi puck to the back of it. Thus I transcoded everything to mp3 at a lower bitrate that was still acceptable to my ears. Somebody please tell me under what circumstances listening to low bit rate mp3 is better than dropping fifteen bucks on a 256GB microsd card. That is pants on head crazy.
- dsr_ 3y agoIt goes along with trying to repurpose a phone as a server: not much money, use what you've got.
- kleer001 3y ago> That is pants on head ... entertaining I love these quirky working too hard for an iota of questionable gains. It warms my heart and soothes my soul. IMHO this kind of behaviour is going to be our saving grace when the aliens come and see if we're fit to join the galactic community. :P
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- anyfoo 3y agoRe-encoded low bitrate MP3, even...
- fsckboy 3y ago> under what circumstances listening to low bit rate mp3 is better when you are 40 and over and can no longer hear high notes
- NovaDudely 3y agoYears back when I was about 30 - I was convinced that I could tell between a 128Kbit OGG file and FLAC file. Re-encoding the FLAC's to OGG and mixing them up blindly... nope couldn't tell at all! Nowadays I don't think I would even notice until it gets laughably bad.
- justsomehnguy 3y agoModern codecs and presets are great. Things what were encoded 20 years ago... ain't.
- acdha 3y agoThat’s an exaggeration but even so MP3 distortion isn’t a low-pass filter. There’s one specific problem with it encoding sounds like cymbals but that’s not a function of bitrate. The sad irony here is that using a format which hasn’t been obsolete for a couple decades would have had better audio at a lower bitrate.
- userbinator 3y agoWhere are you getting (true) 256GB microSD for $15?
- infinityio 3y agonot quite $15, but Amazon US seems to have PNY cards with fairly promising reviews for $16.99 at the moment (although they may be out of stock)
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> Amazon "We comingle fake and real products and have blatant fraud" Amazon? I would never buy SD cards or flash drives there if I had any other option. There's a reason the comment you're replying to said a "true" card of that size, and most of the reason is Amazon listings for fake cards.
- abawany 3y agopny is the only brand of sd that has failed for me, turning read-only after a short period of time. they are now on my vendor blacklist.
- dotancohen 3y agoActually, failing read-only is a feature that I would like. Most cards fail write-only ))
- ayemiller 3y agoI've used this place, happy to recommend- https://bulkmemorycards.com/shop/microsd-cards/microsd-class-10/256gb-sandisk-ultra-uac-microsd-memory-card-updated-version/ https://bulkmemorycards.com/shop/microsd-cards/microsd-class...
- pedrogpimenta 3y agoThere might be something wrong with your device if it kept closing Termux due to RAM. Up until 1 month ago, I used my Galaxy S7 as my phone and I ran navidrome inside Linux (AnLinux) inside Termux and it didn't close automatically. I now do the same with a Galaxy S10e as the already semi-broken S7 decided to call it quits.
- freedomben 3y agoKind of a side-comment, but Termux is possibly my favorite app, and is one of the killer features of Android IMHO.
- lucb1e 3y agoSimilar here, though I use a different app (which requires root) to achieve roughly the same thing. I would not want to be without it and is one of the killer things that makes a phone so powerful nowadays. It's really sad that Google doesn't give a rat's ass about it and these nice things tend to break with every version (see also: OsmAnd track recording as alternative for Google Location History keeps being killed and needs a different workaround in every second version since Android 4 or so). Termux is being all lovey dovey towards them in the FAQ https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/FAQ#Will_Termux_work_on_Android_11 https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/FAQ#Will_Termux_work_on_Android... (showing Google they're oh-so-reasonable and willing to play ball and provide good publicity) but much as they cover it up with pink ribbons, the FAQ still says: "we chose to force use compatibility with Android 9 APIs (SDK 28) at the cost of ability to publish updates on Google Play." (sounds like they've volunteered to be banned from publishing updates on the Play Store) and "[on Android 12,] spawning several processes would randomly close the application". So as I understand it, it's broken on anything newer than Android 9, but many use-cases still work until reality starts to catch up and it's removed from the Play Store for being stale or when newer Android versions decide that newer-than-9 security practices now become enforced. I dread getting a new phone with a new Android version... every time it's a struggle to get things back in order (e.g. automated backups of all your data, as imo everyone should (be able to) have, but you can't do that without rooting and knowing where to even find your /data).
- squarefoot 3y agoOld routers can be repurposed too, with the added advantage that they can be flashed with a completely native OS such as OpenWRT and its huge number of available FOSS packages. https://openwrt.org/packages/table_owrt21_2/start https://openwrt.org/packages/table_owrt21_2/start The supported hardware list is quite long; chances are that many of us have in a drawer something that could run it. https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_fwdownload https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_fwdownload
- vigneshv_psg 3y agoIsn't it an inherent problem with phones that if they are left on charge forever that their battery will explode? I've had test devices that I left connected for months together and inevitably the battery has exploded on every single one of them. Perhaps, it can be hooked up to a smart plug and charged up whenever battery goes down below a certain percentage and shut it off when it's full.
- Baeocystin 3y agoBecoming a spicy pillow is the inevitable fate of almost all small lithium electronics batteries. Keeping them in the 60-80% range will slightly help extend life, but that's about it, unfortunately.
- elevaet 3y agoI've been using "al dente" on my new laptop to keep the battery charge maxed out at 80% and hopefully extend the life of my battery.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoIf you have root, that's easy to do on Android as well. Honestly, it's one of the like three things that I root for these days
- ajolly 3y agoThanks, didn't realize I could do that
- lozenge 3y agoMy Samsung has this option, it's called Protect Battery, but I still need to turn it off to get through flights and other fun events.
- dotancohen 3y ago
- cosmojg 3y agoThis right here is Android's killer app, and the very reason I've exclusively owned rootable Android mobile devices (Nexus → OnePlus → Pixel) for a little over a decade. Every single one of my old devices that isn't lost or totally destroyed (a few have broken screens) is now a server providing little services like this one (mostly filehosting and backups in my case). It's been quite fun!
- SECProto 3y ago> This right here is Android's killer app Similarly, for me, android's killer app is that I can still get a phone with an SD card slot and an aux jack - so my music is with me, without needing to rely on a flakey old phone rightly condemned to the junk drawer.
- flangola7 3y agoWhich phone is that? Even Samsung (who once mocked Apple for it) has dropped those external features.
- noisy_boy 3y agoASUS still has sdcard slots in their phones. Sony phones too but Asus is a better bet at this point for long term supportability.
- sudobash1 3y agoAll the Moto phones I have had come with these. I still see them in plenty of Android phones.
- SECProto 3y agoYes, my previous phone was a Samsung, and I dropped them because they no longer come with these two features. My current phone is a OnePlus (basically rebadged Oppo). I also considered the Moto G series, but their selection in Canada is awful.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
- pipeline_peak 3y ago[flagged]
- moondev 3y agoThe killer app for Android is scrcpy. https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy This project can enable so many interesting things. It allows you to fully control, stream and automate anything running android including phones, Chromecasts, and even the android subsystem on Chromebooks. The new version supports streaming audio in addition to the device screen from wherever you run the scrcpy CLI. You can even send keystrokes and "dpad" events to control apps, or connect your mouse and keyboard to the device like it was hardwired. And it all works over your LAN via Ethernet or WiFi without root. You could easily use this with any audio app to kick off casting to other devices in this context. Oh and btw it even can run from inside a docker container. Cheers to the author(s) it's a hackers dream tool.
- albert_e 3y agoThanks for this pointer. For a long time I thought there should be a good open-source project that allows some usage of old phones that fall out of daily usage but still have most of the features working -- except for may be battery life or a chipped screen. For example I have a bunch of tablets and mobile phones that are in this state. Ideally I would like to be able to mount them to a wall and convert them into simple displays that I can "cast" a screen or video to (other use cases -- simple weather displays, security camera monitors, remote switches for smart devices, etc). I know some of these use cases are possible but last time I played with them it was a little more effort than I had time for. Was hoping to see more general purpose plug-and-play solutions emerge.
- 3y ago
- davemp 3y agoWhat’s the power situation on old devices like these? Is it not really a big deal because you’re not running heavy workloads or would say a NUC pay for itself in comparison?
- kbar13 3y agoNUC is hundreds of dollars. assuming this device runs like 5W on average, that'd be like $1 / year at $0.025/kWh in energy costs.
- antifa 3y agoHere are my research notes: NUC7i7BNH - 10.31 Watt Idle/49.31 Watt load - $0.86/month idle to $4.32/month load Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 MacMini M1 - 6.8W idle/39W max (apple specs) - 4.2W idle/31W load (anandtech compute MT workload) Beats a low-end VPS in everything except existing in good network infrastructure. Android smartphone wasn't on my comparison list at the time, as I'm not familiar with installing and running debian on one.
- Digory 3y agoWhat’s the state of the art on whole home streaming these days? Amazon seems to be intent on making echo dots less and less useful for that.
- albert_e 3y agoSamsung Galaxy S7 -- supports wireless charging. So you can still get full functionality out of the phone if the physical charging port is the only one that is broken.
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- blululu 3y agoThis is great. Something that always upset me is seeing people spend huge amounts of money building IoT products when an old phone would be better and cheaper. The waste is especially galling when it is done by a company that makes its money off ads, and is selling fresh consumer electronics at a loss. Recycling your old phone gives a better experience and save money for both the consumer and the producer.