IT Home June 9th news, according to foreign media Tom's Hardware on the 8th, researchers from the University of Tartu, Estonia have discovered a new way to rejuvenate old smartphones: Connect multiple old phones in series and form a "micro data center" that can process data in real time on site.
The school said that although from an environmental perspective, it is best for users to extend the service life of their mobile phones as much as possible, in reality, the technology updates are too fast and the trends change too quickly, and it is not easy to stick to using an old phone. Therefore, the research team took a different approach and explored a new sustainable path.
Huber Flores, associate professor of universal computing, said innovation does not necessarily mean creating new things, re-examining old things and giving them new meanings, and it is also an innovation. The researchers took out the batteries of four old phones to reduce the risk of leakage and contamination; then used 3D printing technology to create the case and bracket, and then paired with homemade circuits for power adjustment. This design not only allows the main structure to be reused, but also facilitates the replacement of damaged mobile phones in the future. The school said that the first round of trials was successfully completed and the system could automatically monitor marine organisms without manual intervention. In the past, performing similar tasks also required divers to take pictures and return to the water surface for analysis. The team pointed out that this small "data center" also has a wide range of application scenarios, such as installing in bus stops to count the number of passengers in real time, helping to optimize the entire public transportation system. IT Home learned from the report that there are currently many teaching contents on the Internet to teach people how to convert old mobile phones and tablets into monitoring, monitors and other uses, and there are even tutorials showing how to transform old mobile phones into webcams with picture quality better than cheap cameras.
If the team can build this prototype into an inexpensive, easy to use, reliable, customizable edge node device, the technology is likely to form an emerging market that brings a second life to hundreds of millions of old phones that should have been scrapped or discarded.
