Some people like their Homelabs to be as large and sophisticated as possible, with racks of new or excess server equipment that sucks power. (Hardware Haven) Obviously has the opposite idea, since it has just made a video on making the smallest server as expensive as possible: an Android phone.
Of course, this will not distribute data teraoctes to several gigabytes per second, but this is not the case of use of everyone. Do not forget, the flagship phones had several RAM cores and gigabytes a decade ago, so even an old and exploded smartphone has more than enough power for something like the home assistant, which is installed in this video.
After planning to charge Termux and root his device for Docker-on-Android, he opted for Postmarketos, the first Linux for old smartphones. It is not because the Linux environment you get with Termux would not work; It’s just that he wanted something native. To this end, he bought an Xiaomi Mi A1 a little worse for Ebay’s use so that the Alpine postal market can use.
Regarding software, it was just a question of following the instructions and the reading manuals – Linux is Linux, after all. The firewall turned out to be his main challenge, although the test of projecting the assistant at home to execute the Minecraft server met Java Issues (Hardware Haven) had no interest in helping out. In terms of equipment, however, do you want to leave a phone trendy permanently? Smokey the bear does not suggest you, especially if you live near a forest. In addition, you probably do not want your server to WiFi, and at least this smartphone was not taking care when using a network of networking.
This meant telephone surgery: the battery is out and 5 V of an old USB charger was killed in the battery charge controller via a diode. The diode was used for its voltage drop, to reduce the 5 V supply to a credible battery voltage – a male converter could have been better, but you use what you have, and the diode drop does not dissipate much power. Power dissipation is always a watt in slow motion, six during a constraint test.
Given what extent the phone was cheap and how much this thing sips little power (material paradise) has an excellent answer to those who say that re-emergement is the pastime of a rich person. This project also reminds us that even if our phones may not be as pirative as we want, they are still far from being completely locked. You can even run Nixos on (some).
