Comment by noodlesUK
5 years ago
I just really wish there were some alternative uses for iPhones and iPads once they hit obsolescence. I’d love to use them as little smart home interfaces or poor-mans homepods. But they don’t generally support that kind of use...
I'm currently using my old iPhones for doing camera-trap photography and videography. I've got a 5s recording some bird feeders in my yard, for example. Decent camera for filming during the day. Unlike my DSLR, it's not artificially constrained to only recording 15 minutes at time. It's tiny, and if I have it near an outlet I can even power it so I don't need to worry about recharging it. It also does slow-mo if you don't mind going down to 720p. I think an iPhone 6 can do slow-mo at 1080p.
Looks cool. How you solve the small space issue in old models?
It hasn't been an issue so far. I have recorded well over an hour at a time and had plenty of space left on the device. I haven't tried leaving it recording overnight (since the birds are in torpor then anyway). That particular phone was 64GB, which can hold something like ~4 hours of 1080p30 video.
The phone contains no apps other than the pre-installed ones, and no data other than the video I'm capturing. After moving the videos to my computer, I remove them from the phone.
Run a local web server for the interface and enable guided access to prevent accidental clicks and swipes. Should make a decent smart interface or destination to push video or audio.
My mom uses an iPhone 5s as a hearing aid for her TV, with her airpods (1st gen). She cannot be happier. She does not bear using true hearing devices but this has helped her a lot.
maybe sell it on ebay for whatever and buy an old android instead. having an app like tasker makes it a lot easier for that type of automation. you can even use tasker to make a basic interfaces if you want to control a lot of different things from one screen