Upcycled Technology

by Daniel Davis

  The Arduino is now ready to accept G-code and send those instructions to our 3D printer motors. The final piece of software we need is something that takes a 3D G-code file and sends those commands to the Arduino. I stumbled across a simple Windows only program called “Grbl Controller.”6 After downloading and installing the program, connect your Arduino to your computer and launch. You can select your Arduino COM port number from the “Port Name” drop-down box, and then click “Open” to connect to it.

  Now you can use the arrows on the lower right to jog through the motors. The drop-down box in the lower right corner sets the movement speed. Make sure the speed setting is set to one instead of ten. If any of the platforms are running backward, you can go to Tools > Options and then invert the axis for the backward motor.

  Once everything is powered up and running, the final step is finding something to print. Since this 3D printer is very specialized, I had to create the G-code by hand, and you can download the samples I made to 3D print on your own machine7. If everything goes well, you should see all the motors move and the 3D pen will start creating 3D objects!

  What can I say about smartphones? They’re portable and pocket-sized, they’ve revolutionized the way we communicate and connect with each other online, they’ve made it easier to document our lives through photo and video, and they entice us to upgrade by coming out with something better and faster every year. Because of that last point, there are so many smartphones lying around going to waste. Although smartphones are currently the predominant mobile device, that wasn’t always the case. Believe it or not, older mobile devices didn’t connect to the internet. Instead of having everything on one device such as contact lists, music players, and ability to call, these activities all used to be on separate devices. Anyone remember pagers, flip phones, PDAs, and stand-alone MP3 players? Yeah, those were the days.

  The great thing about upcycling old mobile devices is that they are…mobile. This means that they are great for making portable projects. The older mobile devices generally have to be modded or taken apart to make something new, but smartphones, especially Android phones, can easily be repurposed just by adding or creating new useful apps! The following chapter has three projects ranging from easy to advanced, and it centers around upcycling different types of mobile devices.

  Project 1

  Old Smartphone to Security Camera

  Beginner

  Synopsis: You don’t need to pay for a home security system to get good quality surveillance. All you need is a spare smartphone and an internet connection.

  Parts & Tools Needed

  •Old Android smartphone

  Step 1: Updating Your Old Phone

  Lots of people upgrade their phones on a two-year basis. This leaves a lot of older smartphones that are either traded in for a discount, gifted to a friend, or sitting around waiting for the chance to be upcycled. For this project, we’re going to focus on older Android phones. Why Android and not Apple? The primary reason for choosing an Android phone over Apple is because the Android operating system is “open source,” while iOS on Apple is “closed source.” This means that anyone can edit, modify, update, and upgrade the Android software and post it online, while Apple is the only entity that can edit or modify iOS. So, if Apple decides to stop upgrading the software for a specific phone, then there’s not really any other way to keep that phone updated.

  In contrast, there are several different upgrade options for old Android phones to keep them up-to-date. Depending on the phone, you could install Ubuntu Touch, Resurrection Remix OS, MIUI (developed by Xiaomi), or Lineage OS. Lineage OS supports the largest number of devices.

  What we want to do first is update our Android phone. The reason we want to update the phone with new software is both because it’s more secure and because it increases the compatibility with newer apps in the app store. If your phone is new enough that the manufacturer still pushes out updates to it, then you are good to go.

  But if your phone has been abandoned by the manufacturer, then you can install a third-party version of Android such as Lineage OS8. Lineage OS is the most popular third-party version of Android, and they have a good list of supported devices sorted by manufacturer9. Once you have found your phone, clicking on the link will take you to a page that lays out how to install it.

  Step 2: Creating a Mobile Security Camera

  Once your phone is up to date again, the next step is to install an app that will let us use the phone as a security camera. There are plenty of apps in the app store that can achieve that, but please be careful when downloading unknown apps to your phone. In rare circumstances, the app store could contain malicious apps that can install viruses on your device. A good app that is trusted and full-featured is called IP Webcam10.

  The free version contains ads, but otherwise it’s fully functional. Once installed, select the “Open” button to open it. It opens with

  a menu of different options and tweaks that you are welcome to skim through, but to get it started right away as a webcam, scroll to the very bottom and select “Start Server.” This will launch the camera interface.

  Step 3: Connecting to the Security Camera

  If everything starts up correctly, you’ll see the video feed on your mobile screen. At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a set of numbers called an “IP address” and a port number. The purpose of this IP address is to allow other devices to connect to the mobile security camera. Now, on a different device that’s connected to your network, open up a browser and type in the IP address from your mobile device. It’s important for the other device to be on the same network as the mobile security camera. On the web browser, you will see buttons for remotely controlling and viewing the security camera. To view the camera in your browser, you can click on the button that says “Browser” next to the “Video Render” header. Other buttons will let you control features like turning on the LED light, taking recordings, taking photos, and switching from the back camera to the front camera.

  With this setup, you can access the security camera from any device connected to your network. If you would like to access the security camera from outside your network, it requires setting up a “Port Forwarding” entry on your network’s router. How you can access the router varies depending on which router you have, but in general, you can open up a web browser on any device connected to your network and type in either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 into the address bar of your browser. In most cases, this will bring up your router with a login page.

  If you haven’t changed the login information, it can be found either on the bottom of your router itself or by searching Google for the default login for your router.

  Once you have logged in to the router, you can skim through the different settings for your router until you find an option labeled “Port Forwarding” (though some routers may not have this option).

  Under this option, you can create a new entry and enter the IP address (for example, 192.168.0.13). It should also ask for a port range and/or a local port, which is where you should put the port number (for example, 8080). Another option defines which “Protocol” to use. Most routers have these options: TCP, UDP, Both. The camera uses the TCP protocol, so selecting that option should work.

  In order to access the webcam externally, the final step is to find the external (or public) IP address for your internet connection. To find the external IP address, open up a browser from any device on your network and then search for “what is my IP address” using the Google search engine. (Note that this may not work using other search engines.)

  The Google results should display your external IP address. With this information, you should be able to get on any network connection anywhere, open up a web browser, and then in the URL bar, type in your external IP address followed by a colon and then the port number for your security camera (for example, 99.88.77.66:8080). Assuming everything worked correctly, this sho
uld bring up your security camera’s interface!

  Project 2

  Revive an Old iPod

  Intermediate

  Synopsis: iPods are one of the classic devices that started the Apple renaissance. If you still have one lying around, why not give it a much-needed hardware and software upgrade?

  Parts & Tools Needed

  •An old iPod Classic (may not work with other models)

  •A CompactFlash (CF) camera card

  •CF Card to ZIF adapter (available on

  eBay, Amazon, or Ali Express)

  •iPod Classic repair kit (also available on

  eBay, Amazon, or Ali Express)

  Step 1: Taking Apart the iPod

  Before internet-connected mobile devices that could stream music to your phone, there were internet-less mobile MP3 players that basically only played music and nothing else. Sounds ancient, right? Out of all the MP3 players in the market, the one that dominated the space was the iPod. The iPod was a huge milestone not only in mobile technology but also in fashion.

  It just wasn’t cool to own a portable MP3 player that wasn’t an iPod, and since I owned several cheap MP3 knockoffs, I was the epitome of “uncool.” The only downside to the older iPod Classics came with mechanical hard drives that had limited storage space and were easy to break if the iPod was dropped or jostled around. iPods were notorious for giving users the “frowny face of death.”

  I was given one of these broken iPods (a fifth generation classic) and wanted to see what I could do to revive it with upgraded, more stable storage.

  Before we get started, keep in mind that swapping out the hard drive on your iPod will cause you to lose everything that was on it and will be like starting from scratch. If you are OK with that, then the first step is to crack open the iPod and see what’s inside. Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “crack,” because Apple devices are very fragile and can easily crack or break if you’re not too careful. While a skillful hand might be able to pry it open with an eyeglass screwdriver and a guitar pick, I would highly recommend investing in an iPod repair kit to avoid any disasters. Using the repair kit pry tools, find where the front panel meets the metal back casing and slowly begin to pry it open. Be very careful and just go around the perimeter of the iPod prying away the panel a little bit each time. Eventually it will pop off.

  Once the front panel is separated from the backing, there are a couple of cables that connect it to the main logic board. The cable that goes to the battery is easy to disconnect. Just find where it connects to the logic board, and there should be a release flap on the connector that disconnects the cable.

  There is one more cable that goes to the iPod hold switch, but I was able to swing open the front panel and lay it beside the back casing without having to remove this cable.

  Step 2: Replacing the Hard Drive

  The hard drive should be surrounded by rubber bumper guards and connected by a small cable called a ZIF cable. You can remove the bumper guards and flip the hard drive downward to expose where the ZIF cable connects to it. Unsnapping the little plastic connector clip will release the cable and allow you to remove the hard drive.

  With the hard drive removed, we can now replace it with the CF card. CF cards come in a range of storage sizes up to 256 gigabytes at the time of this book’s writing. The first step is to place your CF card in the adapter. There should be a plastic connector on the adapter that the ZIF cable attaches to. Connect the cable to the adapter, make sure it’s secure, and then position it inside the iPod where the hard drive used to be. Now that everything is connected, reconnect the battery cable and replace the front panel.

  Step 3: Reinstalling the Software

  When you first turn the iPod on, it doesn’t know how to recognize the blank CF card, so the screen will tell you to connect the iPod to your computer to restore it.

  Restoring an iPod requires iTunes and an Apple account. If you don’t already have iTunes, it’s free to download and install on your computer. Assuming iTunes is installed on your computer, plug your iPod into it. It should be autodetected by iTunes, at which point it should give you an option to restore it. Clicking the restore button will reinstall the iPod software onto it. Then you can load up your music and start using it as an iPod again!

  If you want a more customized experience that the default Apple software can’t give you, you can also install Rockbox (www.rockbox.org). It’s an alternative operating system for iPods and other MP3 players. Rockbox free, and it allows you to upload custom fonts, themes, icons, and even play Doom! It’s simple to install. Just download the Rockbox utility, plug your iPod in, launch the utility, and click install!

  Project 3

  Old Cell Phone to Smartwatch

  Advanced

  Synopsis: Before there were smartphones, there were “feature” phones. Remember? They were the ones with physical buttons and monochrome screens. Still got one of those lying around somewhere? Here’s how you can turn that old phone into a smartwatch!

  Old Cell Phone to Smartwatch - Larger images can be found on page 124 of photo glossary

  Parts & Tools Needed

  •Old Nokia Cell Phone

  •SparkFun Arduino Pro Mini 3.3v

  •Bluetooth Module

  •Micro USB charging board

  •3.7v Lithium ION battery

  •4 x 1.8 kOhm resistors

  •4 x 3.3 kOhm resistors

  •1 x 10 kOhm resistors

  •1 x diode

  •Small slide switch

  •Small momentary button

  Step 1: Scavenging Parts

  What I’d like to do for this crazy/ambitious project is turn an old cell phone into a smartwatch. The primary reason for this project is simply that I had an old cell phone lying around and wanted to find a creative way to repurpose it. By “old cell phone,” I mean the ones that had the small LCD screens and physical keyboard/buttons. The one I had is a Nokia 1100, but almost any other old cell phone would work, so long as you can find the schematics and information for it online.

  The first thing we want to do is take the phone apart and see what we can scavenge from it. The most important item we want to try and scavenge is the screen.

  From my Nokia, I was also able to get a vibrating motor and a speaker, which wasn’t as much as I was hoping, but was at least a good start.

  If you’re not sure how to extract the parts or if your LCD is salvageable, do a quick Google search to see if you can find some teardown information for your phone and schematics or a pin-out diagram for the LCD screen. What you’re able to scavenge really depends on what type of phone you have and how old it is. The older the phone, the more scavengeable parts you will find.

  Given what I was able to extract, the parts I can use in the watch are the screen and the vibrating motor. While it would be nice to use the speaker to add audio feedback to the watch, it’s a little too bulky for this project. Now that we have a couple of core parts, we can start building a watch around them. Let’s begin with the LCD.

  Step 2: Figuring Out the LCD

  Without a working LCD, we have no project, so we need to figure out how to get our LCD working outside of the phone. The first step is to see if I can find a schematic for it online. Doing a quick Google search for “Nokia 1100 LCD,” I was able to find out a ton of information about it. I found that the LCD model number is PCF8814. I was also able to find a schematic that listed the pinouts (what each of the pins on the LCD represents).

  This is a view from the back side of the LCD, so pin eight is on the far left when looking at the back. There are nine pins, but one is unused, leaving eight usable pins. The pins on the LCD are very small, so in an effort to make them easier to connect to, I soldered wire from a ribbon cable to each pin, and then hot-glued it all into place. So now I can connect each of the wires to a breadboard to make it easier to work with
the LCD.

  Step 3: Driving the LCD

  Now that I have an LCD screen ready for reuse, I need something that can control or “drive” it. Generally, a microcontroller is a good choice to drive an LCD, and there are lots of microcontroller options available. I decided to go with an Arduino Pro Mini because it’s very small and there is a fantastic Arduino community online for support. Another benefit of using an Arduino is that I can use a larger Arduino Uno for prototyping and then switch to the Arduino Pro Mini when I’m ready to shove it into a smartwatch.

  Let’s start wiring stuff up! First, I connected all the LCD wires to a breadboard, and then I began connecting wires to the Arduino Uno.

  (I’ll switch all connections to the Arduino Pro Mini later when I’m done testing.) I added some resistors to the pins that connect directly to Arduino pins to keep the Arduino from sending too much power to the LCD and burning it out. You can use the diagram for reference, but it ended up being a total of four 1.8k Ohm resistors and four 3.3k Ohm resistors.