We are gonna have a bad time with E-Waste with all these smartphones going outdated soon.

Most of them have the commonality of having an audio port. And sometimes a usb port.

So why not repurpose these smartphones as OCR scanners, for barcodes like QR codes.

Just output the code over a serial port via audio or usb. As for the display, you could display QR codes, if needed as well.

The cable could be a typical usb that simulates a serial host, or an audio port that outputs serial signal.

The serial signal can then be read directly for custom/embedded systems, or can simulate a usb keyboard for easy entry of data for the common user.

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Keeping everything as 'serial', also will reduce vectors for exploits.

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Could allow wifi connection, but might be safer to just disable it entirely.

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Serial :- Old school UART
-- mofosyne, Oct 06 2014

I'm all for recycling but smartphones aren't designed to last, and definitely aren't designed for industrial use. I had an old Android phone that I was using as an OBDII scanner for a while but 6 months after I got a new phone it was already hard to keep the software up to date and the hardware working on the old phone.
-- DIYMatt, Oct 06 2014


Old smartphones are/will be valuable for their rare Earth metals. They're less rare in phones than the Earth...
-- bs0u0155, Oct 06 2014


Once more, with feeling!
-- RayfordSteele, Oct 06 2014



random, halfbakery