I had an idea and even basic prototype a million years ago where I was going to get a bunch of used cheap Android phones for free or very cheap, and make a tran

I had an idea and even basic prototype a million years ago where I was going to get a bunch of used cheap Android phones for free or very cheap, and make a transcoding cluster out of it and make a ton of money. I figured that no one wants old phones, and Android phones are relatively powerful and utilize a relatively small amount of power, so I'd be able to undercut competitors, and I thought it would be a good idea to get more life out of these computers and reduce e-waste. I got ahold of most of my friends and family's "old phones living in a drawer", and I did more or less get the prototype working with a message queue, but I never really figured out a good way to utilize the built in h264 encoding chips, so it was always extremely slow software encoding, slow enough to where I don't think anyone would have actually paid me for it, and I lost interest in it. I don't think it was a dumb idea, and it's not something I've completely given up on doing eventually, but I don't think it was as clever as 23 year old me thought it was either. If anyone here disagrees feel free to take it and run with it.