Are we too eager to write off seemingly broken kit? Roger Thomas has been doing some creative upcycling
Giving away unwanted but functional tech is good, and we know it. So is recycling, such as sending a dead phone off in one of those prepaid envelopes so that valuable materials can be recovered from it.
Recycling, however, has its limits. One disadvantage is that recycled materials are usually ‘downcycled’ into something simpler or of lower quality. The metals and plastics from old phones are really no more than that until they get used to make a new product. Recycled paper is widely used, but its fibres are much shorter, so it needs to be mixed with fresh material. All these considerations bring their own costs, both financial and environmental. There is, however, a third possibility.
Uphill? No Struggle
‘Upcycling’ isn’t a strenuous new Olympic sport but a philosophy that entails reusing goods and materials, which may no longer serve their original purpose but which can nevertheless be used for something else exactly as they are, without expending time and resources on dismantling them or reducing them to raw materials.
The term was first used in the 1990s, but as an idea it’s been around forever, and it’s something we all do to an extent. An empty marmalade jar, for example, has lost its intended function as it can no longer furnish me with a ready supply of marmalade. I can’t reuse it as a marmalade jar, because I don’t make my own. I could lob it into the relevant recycling bin and allow it to be turned into aggregate or glass-fibre insulation, but that would be an industrial process like any other, consuming energy and creating a certain amount of pollution. Furthermore, unlike conventional manufacturing, it would produce a material that was much cruder than the object I started with.
On the other hand, what if I simply wash it and use it for storing pencils? It now has a very different long-term function, arrived at non-destructively and with minimum energy use. What’s more, when it eventually fails in its new purpose as well (i.e. when I drop it and break it), it can have a third life as a true recyclable if I chuck the bits into my local bottle bank.
Tech Tonic
We’re less inclined to think of computers and related technology as being upcyclable because such items generally have a primary function, key selling point or unique feature that defines their intended use. If we buy a mobile phone, for example, whatever else it may be capable of, we expect it to handle voice calls and texts. We assume that speakers will speak and that monitors will, er, monitor, and quite right too. If any such gadgetry stops doing what it’s supposed to do, then if it’s beyond economical repair (an increasingly likely conclusion, sadly), we generally dispose of it – hopefully via a recycling facility – and obtain a replacement.
All that said, there can be another way of doing things. You’re about to read three unlikely-sounding case studies in computer upcycling, involving a cheap netbook that won’t actually connect to any kind of network, a touchscreen tablet with a non-functioning touchscreen and an aging laptop that has had its hard drive removed, leaving just an empty caddy. Without any dismantling, repairs, replacement parts or modifications, we’re going to make all three of these casualties do useful things.
Trash Trawl
The netbook is a primitive UbiSurfer model dating from around 2010, and even when it was working properly, describing this device as ‘bog-standard’ would do the average bog a disservice. Running at all of 346MHz and embedded with Windows CE 6.00, its main purpose was to provide cheap access to the internet via either a wireless LAN (there’s no Ethernet socket and it can’t see a USB/RJ45 adapter) or manufacturer Datawind’s own mobile system. Unfortunately, neither option now works, and Datawind no longer supports the thing anyway.
I have more affection for the second item, which is an Archos 101 G9 tablet. Although its OS won’t update beyond Android 4.0, its large screen and 1GHz dua-core processor serve my needs nicely, notably reading online journals and magazines. Sadly, it appears (watch what I did there) to have developed the digital equivalent of locked-in syndrome in the form of an unresponsive touchscreen; it boots up, but attempting to unlock it just leaves you pawing at the padlock icon in desperation.
The third and final specimen is an ex-corporate Dell Latitude laptop, seemingly signed out to an under-performing employee, as it shows virtually no signs of wear despite being ten years old. With its dual-core 1.83GHz processor and upgraded 2GB of RAM, it would have been useful enough during its heyday. At some point, unfortunately, whether for reasons of security, malfunction or cannibalisation, its hard drive was removed; booting it up simply leaves it pleading for a system disc. I don’t have a spare HDD that’s big enough to be worth installing, but I don’t want to buy a used one as I’m convinced that today’s larger drives have a shorter working life than their smaller predecessors. I can’t justify the cost of a new one, as I don’t really need the machine anyway, but at the same time I don’t want to give it away incomplete. Quandary.
All in all, then, we’ve got a fine collection of chocolate teapots: a netbook that isn’t, an untouchable tablet and a laptop that can’t even store its own operating system, let alone anything else. Is it really possible to find constructive uses for this stuff?
Lateral Thinking
The trick to upcycling is not to worry about what something can’t do, but to focus on what it can do. That marmalade jar may now be devoid of marmalade, but it’s still a functional transparent container. Yes, welcome to the University of the Bleedin’ Obvious, but apply this principle to this heap of dodgy kit and the concept becomes rather interesting.
Let’s check out this netbook. While its networking capabilities have ceased to be, it still has its rudimentary but functional pre-installed SoftMaker Office software. This comprises a word processor, spreadsheet and PowerPoint clone, all of which are compatible with MS Office, which actually bodes fairly well; while I wouldn’t trust the presentation program purely because different versions of PowerPoint have enough trouble understanding each other as it is, the suite can at least see and create files such as .doc and .docx. There are plenty of shortcomings in comparison with a serious office suite, such as the laughably tiny font set, but as the unit’s ‘My Computer’ icon is actually an image of an old-school PDA, it seems churlish to be too choosy. The fact is that it would be perfectly possible to transfer documents between this machine and a ‘proper’ computer and work on them in either environment, which brings us to the UbiSurfer’s USB ports.
There are two USB sockets, but class compliance means nothing to CE, so it’s no surprise that these two sockets are only intended for external keyboards, pointing devices and storage media. Nevertheless, this is all we need to upcycle the UbiSurfer as an emergency office machine. Because netbook keyboards are too small for serious typing, we can add that external keyboard and mouse we’ve got stashed in a box under the bed; those USB ports will work with a hub, so we can also connect an external HDD or a stick. In an ideal world, we’d be able to add an external monitor as well, but the UbiSurfer doesn’t support this. Hoicking the font size up gets us by, though, giving a near-WYSIWYG half-a-page-of-A4 screen area.
So who might use such a thing? Pretty much anyone who’s working to a deadline and whose computer packs up at the worst possible moment. If that coursework essay/report/job application needs to be in someone’s inbox by tomorrow morning, this upcycled bespoke word processor (remember them?) can save your bacon. If your work is half-complete already, just use the latest backup you made onto your external drive. You back up online? Bear with me. Despite the machine’s networking issues, if you own a smartphone, you can even e-mail the document there and then. Forget Bluetooth or anything similar, as this device has nothing of the sort. It does, however, have an SD card slot, so it’s just a matter of installing a micro-SD card with an adapter, copying your stuff to it, then physically transferring the card to your smartphone and emailing the material from there. You should also be able to work in the other direction, as it were, by downloading backups from online storage onto your phone’s micro-SD and then transferring the card to the netbook.
The Flatpack Office
Just by applying a little ingenuity, then, we’ve sorted out a useful standby office role for this seemingly unpromising item. We can do something very similar with the Archos tablet, because luckily it happens to have full USB implementation via the miniature socket, which is also used for charging the device. Its user interface can simply be accessed via USB peripherals, provided we invest a quid or so in an adapter that will convert the baby USB socket into a standard one.
If you really do need to use a non-touchy tablet for something approaching its original purpose, a handheld trackball mouse will help up to a point, although you’ll be stuck with clicking individual characters on the on-screen keyboard. Without that, however, this would just be a broken tablet – except to the upcycler, it’s a superlightweight, noiseless, heatless laptop with long battery life, a built-in stand (it’s got a foldout jobbie around the back) and a radical form factor that allows you to select your own choice of keyboard and pointing device. Not bad advertising copy for a supposedly broken product!
Backtracking slightly, the debate about the viability of tablets as office machines as well as being lifestyle toys is ongoing, but it’s really a matter of horses for courses. Office work may be horribly complicated or may amount to nothing more than generating and distributing simple text documents or calculations. The former is really beyond the scope of any cheap tablet, the latter a walkover for our upcycled example, with any number of in-between scenarios also being possible.
The most useful feature this particular model has from this perspective is its 10.1” screen, which makes for a thoroughly usable typing area. It’s then just a matter of adding a suitable keyboard, a mouse and any external storage you may need via a USB hub. If you use a compact keyboard and a travel mouse, you’ll have an upcycled business ‘laptop’ that’s far less bulky than many purpose-built equivalents. There’s a generous swathe of Android office apps available, from which I’ve chosen WPS Office as being fine for my needs. As usual, most are either cheap or free.
Playtime!
So far so good, then, but having removed any excuse for delivering work late by turning these two pieces of dudware into usable office machines, we’ve earned a little recreation. Our upcycled tablet will of course do all the things any other tablet could do in terms of accessing online entertainment and social media, but we can go one step further with both tablet and netbook by upcycling them in a different direction as, believe it or not, party DJ devices.
Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that you could roam around clubland with either of these and expect to be taken seriously. However, if it’s just a matter of assembling a playlist or two for a social gathering and being able to handle basic DJing requirements (managing your playlists on the fly to suit the mood, for example), then there’s plenty of scope here for the grooveriding upcycler. There’s also the added bonus of not worrying too much if someone spills an entire Bacardi Breezer over your kit because, unlike a proper laptop and a whizzy DJ controller, this stuff has zero cash value.
UbiScratcher?
The netbook’s no-frills media player is tagged ‘TCMP’, indicating that it’s actually CoreCodec’s The Core Media Player (caps thus), a now-discontinued freeware predecessor of CorePlayer/CoreAVC. This was designed for portable devices and does the job well enough, although the long list of file types it claims to support may need to be taken with a pinch of salt if its apparent inability to work with AIFF files is anything to go by. However, it’ll happily stack up a playlist of MP3s, which you can load via the card slot or a USB port, then play the tracks in sequence or pick them on the fly. There’s also a shuffle option if you want to defeat the whole purpose of being a DJ.
Clearly, while you could simply connect the Ubi as is via its headphone socket to some amplified speakers, a hi-fi system or that 1000W PA setup you hired by mistake and have a stream of your chosen floor-fillers livening up your event, there’s not much scope to actively engage with the music. You can tweak it with Core’s equaliser, which allows you do a few dancefloory things like kill the bass on a track then dramatically drop it back in four bars later, but that’s about it. However, if you have another audio source (your iPod, phone, a CD player or just a cheap MP3 player if you want to continue with the low-risk option), you can add a mixer and crossfade between tracks on the two devices. So rush out and buy a Pioneer DJM-2000 Nexus, a snip at £1,729. Or don’t. Instead, try a B-Tech BT35, dating from 2005 and never bettered, or the incredulityprompting Bluw Mini Mixer (pictured), either of which you can find online for less than 20 quid. The former just has two passive faders, one for each device; the latter has a single crossfader, runs on batteries, comes with a hinged metal lid and looks like what we might expect if Apple ever launched a line of tinned cough sweets. Budget another tenner or so and you’ll find a choice of several other models. All you need to do now is sort out what you’ll need by way of connecting cables, but you can do that ‘cos you’re a DJ now, innit?
I Don’t Wanna Rock, DJ
This not being DJ Mart, we needn’t be sidetracked into the minutiae of DJ setups and technique, but it’s worth mentioning that the UbiSurfer-based mixer approach won’t allow you to vary the speed of your tracks so that you can match their beats into a seamless sequence; instead, you’ll end up simply fading one tune into the next. This is hardly a problem in a party situation, as the chances are you’ll be playing well-known tunes, which no one will want to hear at the wrong speed anyway, while you’ll still achieve the aim of keeping people dancing rather than having irritating silences between tracks.
Our non-tactile Android tablet, on the other hand, takes us into more sophisticated territory. There’s actually no shortage of bespoke DJ software available for the Android platform, which will let you do quite a lot of the clever stuff real DJs do. My current favourite is the trendily uncapitalised edjing (see edjing.com), which comes in both a free and a pro version with more features. This app lets you load two virtual discs onto on-screen turntables, then fade/crossfade them, ‘scratch’ them, match their beats (automatically if you’re nervous) and apply various effects to the music. So far so cool, then, but why is this app of particular interest to upcyclers?
Broken Beats
Upcycling is particularly satisfying when the item’s apparent shortcomings can be turned to the user’s advantage. In the case of edjing, the idea is that all the manipulations you need to do are performed on screen. We often don’t notice minor misreads on touchscreens, so if, for example, we click on a link or try to swipe from one page of a document to the next and nothing happens, we simply repeat the action, which usually works. We put the problem down to a greasy spot on the screen or dithery fingers (probably correctly) and promptly forget about it.
However, software-based DJing is much less forgiving. If you attempt an adjustment and it doesn’t happen right there and then, you’ve had it, as you’ll end up with a timing mismatch, an embarrassing silence or some other calamity. For this reason, there’s a positive advantage to using an external pointing device, as its action is always going to be more reliable, so the fact that you can’t use the touchscreen is a useful fault in this context. Choose whatever device you prefer; I personally like using a USB trackpad.
If you want jam on it, Android will also work with certain external soundcards, such as the Fostex PC100 USB. It’s a bit hit or miss – some it won’t see at all, others it will run uncontrollably on full blast – but if you’ve got one handy, it’s worth a try. Party on!
Lacking Drive
How, though, can a laptop without a hard drive be useful for anything at all? Allow me to refer you to that wonderful little beast, Puppy Linux. The virtues of this lightweight OS have often been outlined in this very organ, but there’s one interesting wrinkle to Puppy that particularly applies here. Many Linux distros can run from the installation media on a try-before-youinstall basis. Puppy, however, can run entirely from RAM. The absence of a hard drive doesn’t affect Puppy, because it doesn’t need one; the OS, its bundled applications and anything you do with them can simply reside in the machines memory sticks.
Usefully, our laptop has a generous amount of RAM by Puppy’s undemanding standards, meaning there’s plenty of space for things to happen. All the stuff you see in the screenshot is running simultaneously in real time, including that TV show trailer (and note the absence of a hard drive in the storage report window – it’s all true, y’know). Also, bearing in mind that, quite apart from cloud storage, virtually any operation, from word processing to photo editing, can be done using online resources these days (try zoho.com and pixlr.com respectively), what have we reinvented on the cheap by upcycling this machine with Puppy’s assistance? Did somebody mention the word ‘Chromebook’? Just saying...
Case Closed
Just to reiterate, these are case studies: these particular items happened to be to hand, need very little cupboard space and don’t represent unrealised assets, as they are otherwise worthless. I’m not suggesting for a moment that you should scour jumble sales looking for these specific bits of kit, as your own examples will soon suggest themselves. What I hope to have demonstrated in general is how we can upcycle so much seemingly flakey gear if we stop to think about what it can actually do, thus saving waste and pleasantly surprising ourselves. Anyway, must dash – I need to buy some more marmalade.