Repurposed 8yr old tablet

[Enforcer52]

Found a reason to repurpose an old 8 year old tablet that was no longer update able. After charging it up, fired up chrome and loaded up the Jefferson County Public Safety (TX) feed with the new Beta WebPlayer. It worked great, so left it running hooked up to the wall wart and can now listen to my old home town area on a separate sound source from the PC. Now charging up the Kindle and will see how it works, also have a couple of other old tablets to work with and several old cell phones.

 

[AB5ID]

I'm doing the same thing with an old Nexus 7 tablet and Bluetooth speaker. It's a nice little setup for dedicated listening.

 

[PACNWDude]

Yes, very useful for older tech. After using old tablets for this (monitoring of radio communications), they then become picture displays in my world. Although, one is my AR15 app for satellite pointing as well.....app lets the tablet camera view the sky and overlay antenna pointing data over my view for the satellite I am trying to aim toward. This tablet can no longer communicate via WiFi as that module failed.

 

[StoliRaz]

Years ago I used an old phone for a security camera with an app called Alfred for a while..until the battery swelled up and got very hot. I've not been too keen on keeping old phones and tablets plugged in 24/7 since then...but I would think using it as a radio feed would probably use far less power. Just something to keep an eye on.

 

[Enforcer52]

Yeah definitely have to keep an eye on the battery.

I also just set up a friends Echo Show to access the feeds, works real good.

 

[AB5ID]

Setting a timer for your phone or tablet charger to operate only for a few hours each day can enhance battery health. This allows you to find a balanced approach that prevents the battery from reaching a full 100% charge.

 

[IC-R20]

Batteries all go bad eventually. They're designed with any potential swell in mind too so you're fine. With regular heavy use you end up replacing those every couple of years anyways.

I still have my galaxy tab 4 from 2014. I rooted and installed android 8 on it back in early 2019. I would do a newer version again but I found a decent walmart branded one for $50 and it suprisingly didn't have any bloatware on it so it wasn't worth it anymore. I really like the Scanner Radio app from Gordon Edward. I bought the pro unlock and use it to supplement my coverage outside of my area.

One thing I used to do a lot with old tablets is run servers on them, there were even apps already on the google play store to do that and you didn't need to root unless you wanted to use a port below 1024 though there's a way around that with proxying or dynamic DNS. I ran an IRC and email server on one and File Host/message board on the other to share images with friends as well as live backup from my camera in the field.

 

[StoliRaz]

I really like the Scanner Radio app from Gordon Edward. I bought the pro unlock and use it to supplement my coverage outside of my area.

I bought the pro version of his app probably 11 or 12 years ago. Back before all of this "endless cycle of debt" subscription B.S. infected the play store. One of the few developers who keeps developing without being greedy. Very rare.

 

[IC-R20]

I bought the pro version of his app probably 11 or 12 years ago. Back before all of this "endless cycle of debt" subscription B.S. infected the play store. One of the few developers who keeps developing without being greedy. Very rare.

Indeed, it also carries over to any other android device I use unlike some other apps that require you to buy again. Once I had an issue figuring out adding a custom feed one time and emailed him and he took the time to check out the feed I was trying to get and extracting the URL for me. It's been the only I'm still able to recommend to people interested in monitoring today.

 

[jhooten]

My iPad2 is connected to the network with MyDigitalClock app running set to UTC.

 

[madrabbitt]

Guess i know what i'm doing with a random tablet i found in the office now.

Setting a timer for your phone or tablet charger to operate only for a few hours each day can enhance battery health. This allows you to find a balanced approach that prevents the battery from reaching a full 100% charge.

I have an ipad i use as a hub for controlling some equipment in my house.
So it doesnt get power 100% of the time, i do exactly that. Old electric timer set to turn on for one hour, and off for eleven hours. More then enough to keep the battery above 50% at all times

 

[n0xvz]

I've got a couple of old tablets that I need to reflash. Seems daunting, but it would be nice to get some more use out of technology.