Galaxy Upcycling is a project of Samsung C-Lab which aims to repurpose old Galaxy smartphones for something still usable – and not just throw them into the trash bin and add to the planet’s ever-growing pile of e-waste. At Samsung C-Labs, they allow engineers and team members to work on projects which may be outside of the Korean giant’s business models, but they make for good and innovative products. Galaxy Upcycling is one of these projects.
So the idea is pretty simple – the Galaxy Upcycling will be repurposing older Samsung Galaxy smartphones and find ways to link them to everyday objects, thereby converting them into the internet-of-things (IoT) devices. Upcycling is different from recycling – where one destroys the device and uses its components for something new, upcycling preserves the original product and reworks them to function in a different way than intended.
One of the ways this team upcycled an old Samsung phone was to use it as a fish tank manager, which is something you would have never thought of doing with your old Samsung phone. An older Samsung Galaxy phone was repurposed to serve as a smart hub for controlling the lighting and other functions of a fish tank. The phone was connected to the network, and it allowed the user to do simple tasks wirelessly, like turn the lights on and off, take pictures of the pet fish, feed the fish with just a text message.
The secret behind this is an open-source platform which they use to program the devices. Being open-source, the Galaxy Upcycling team is encouraging other people to create their own IoT devices using old Galaxy smartphones. The team will be sharing their progress and will post guidelines for the software and hardware they develop.
SOURCE: Samsung
