This is my solar powered setup. A somewhat old Pixel 6a that fell from a foot and a half (really!?), a 10w Solar setup that was around 20$ on amazon. And an old compost container I have too many of. Ill be giving it a proper 3d printed case when I get a chance (and a host of other changes) but for now this works! Its worth about 40$ in total (the phone is now worth about 21$ on the open market).
Website: https://solar.chrisco.me/
Website was made with a collection of scripts, apache2 (nginx for some reason did not install, errors), and termux. Ill open source the whole setup in a bit. Theres not much to it to be honest.
Hopefully keeping the battery at 80% will help the lifetime of the battery. I may bump it up at some point if it keeps dieing because lack of sunlight. But we shall see.
More info in the link. I couldn’t get Piefed to repost from a GotoSocial link.
I have bad experience with self-hosting termux server on a Samsung-Android device. The background process would be terminated after one week of hands off runtime. I tried to rectify this in the power-saving settings to no avail. Still this is really cool:
Your server works for me, it displays:
Battery: 63% DISCHARGING
Temp: 12°C
I’ll assume it’s cool, but currently hugged to death for me. Just wanted to point out batteries are replaceable even if glued, fixed my GrapheneOS Pixel7 after it killed itself (spicy pillow) charging in heat in a warmer country. iFixit kit + video worked, then got a Chargie which lets you set a temperature above which it will not charge (33C for me, only charges at night in summer). Probably relevant in your case.
With chargie you could keep the battery hovering around 50%
Meanwhile, I’m using Pixel 3a for my main phone (for quite a few years now) and consider it a relatively up-to-date phone.
Do you know about LowTech Magazine’s guide to host super efficient webserver with optional image dithering?
That website was the first thing I thought about when I saw the post. Great content too!
I had the idea to use an old phone as a server recently. Phones are pretty energy efficient, so it seems like it’d be a smart way to recycle one. Does anyone know if this is actually a good practical idea for a lightweight personal server, rather than just a novelty? I haven’t heard of anyone doing it before so I’m assuming there’s a reason it isn’t a good idea, but I don’t know what that’d be.
I think the best question to ask first is ‘what kind of server?’
A web server could run a reasonably busy low-tech web2.0 blog site on a phone, I think without breaking a sweat.
Other types of serving (media, especially) would be resource limited) maybe not.
And there is an important difference between ’novelty’ and ‘demo’. Even a novelty server can demonstrate new ways to think about tech. Maybe an author could host their book launch on such a setup, serving only a single file and showing that we don’t exactly need to involve Amazon. That’s where my head goes when thinking about these efforts.
That’s sick as hell
Thanks! Its a very simple setup.
Do you have a guide to replicate? I have a half broken pixel 7 that might work for something like this
Seconded.
Especially if it could be done on a phone with a non functioning screen.
Very cool, but would suggest replacing the 6A some time – read up on its battery problems
Yes send it back to Google and get 100USD for it
The battery has already been replaced.
I cannot keep track which models have issues but isn’t the 6a one of those with battery bloat issues? Might remember wrong. Definitley a cool project! Is the phone not getting super hot in that plastic box?
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I’ve been wanting to do exactly this for a long time. Is there any documentation on how to set it up?
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nice! i’d recommend keeping the battery a bit lower tho, and perhaps lower charging currency/voltage.
i believe it’s also possible to run proper linux on this phone btw
Which Linux distro would work on a phone? I have an old zenfone 8 lying around.
postmarketOS, mobian, etc… these are ‘real’ linux distros that work without the android parts. as your device doesn’t have a (near-)mainline kernel port i believe you can boot postmarketOS with the stock downstream kernel, though many peripherals won’t function.
halium based distros like ubports and droidian use a part of the android userspace to make those peripherals work, which can be better if mainline is not possible.
Where did you set up the panels?
Side of the house.
In what country? Because here ain’t 16C.
Looks like California, USA
This is really awesome.
What OS did you flash on that Pixel6 to get it working? Or are you using a linux vm on an android phone?
Generic android with termux.
