This might be quite UK centric and is a very dry answer but old smartphones should be donated to asylum seekers.
I remember reading an article a year or so ago about how asylum live on the welfare afforded to them and their phone bills (a necessary expense) were a huge chunk of it, basically all of them paying well more than I do on my PAYG for similar service. What I see must be the issue is that, without a phone of their own, the cheapest short term option is to sign up for an option that provides a phone.
This immediately limits them from the ultra low budget GiffGaff/Asda/etc type options and will very frequently tie them down to a much less budget friendly carrier if not straight into a contract.
"Secure the Call is a 501(c)(3) charity that provides free 911 emergency-only cell phone to Domestic Violence Centers, Senior Citizen Centers, Police and Sheriff departments."
I don't understand this. If their problem is that they HAVE TO use Giffgaff, I can't sympathise with that - I use it myself and love the service Giffgaff provides.
So this doesn't make sense to me - it doesn't feel they're forced into a corner at all. I'd rather sell the phone and donate money to asylum-seeker supporting charities.
Their problem is that they _can't_ use SIM only options as they need a phone (potentially multiple) too, so it's cheaper in the immediate term to sign up to a £15-20 a month plan that provides a (really crappy) phone than a similar £7 a month one which doesn't.
Of course, on a purely rational level seeing as we're talking about iPhones as opposed to just phones in general, the best option would be sell the iPhone and use the proceeds from it to buy and donate multiple cheaper (but sturdy) Androids
Old smartphones are good as security cameras: they have a nice camera and wi-fi of course, but also could be much better than traditional security cams as they also can have 3G/4G networking and a battery, in case power/internet is cut for example. They could also record or play sounds, like an alarm. I have an iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 doing that. However, it's not easy to find an app for such a use, I'm planning to open-source my custom one + setup.
However, BE CAREFUL, devices with batteries MAY BE DANGEROUS. I have had so many bulging/swollen batteries, even with devices just stored in a drawer. No incident or fires yet fortunately. So always keep an eye on them!
I agree with your use case and I am interested in your solution. So many functions to add like face recognition, record only on motion detection (what is threshold)--object size/distance, send alerts, attempt license plate scan, etc
CCTV processing is often done server-side (ZoneMinder, Sinobi, ...), but nowadays "old" devices could do some stuff too. Motion detection is maybe not that intensive, but is hard to pull off (a car passing in the street might change the light on the walls/ceiling, it should not trigger the alarm, dogs/cats, ...). On iOS, you could do face detection using some Apple provided CoreImage components.
A few things I have been missing in the current apps/software: simple way to turn on/off (I had to open/kill apps), use less bandwidth (by pushing to the server only when motion is detected for example, MJPEG stream was about 200Kb/s), play an alarm sound when motion is detected, being able to interact remotely with the device like saying something out loud (if kid came home, triggered the motion detection and forgot to turn off the camera), ...
I wouldn't go for license plates though: you should not point a security camera to the outside/street!
There are also a few open-source projects with this kind feature: StreamIt for example (https://github.com/twittemb/StreamIt), which also provides an MJPEG stream.
Not an answer, but this seems like it would be a fun, and fairly painless side-project. I've never tried writing something for streaming video over a network so it seems like it would be a good learning experience.
I run repair shops for a living, so I can tell you the #1 thing people do is give them to their kids or other family members.
Trade-ins with carriers are big as well, and of course selling them will still net some money as well. You can sell to local stores or online at sites like Swappa.
People who aren't as technical as the typical HN reader often don't know that iPhone, iPad, and laptop batteries are replaceable, and it's usually relatively cheap to do so. Please educate your friends and family members!
Donate. There are a lot of organizations that collect secondhand phones for people in need, including the homeless, refugees, people escaping domestic abuse, and the like.
Every time I upgrade I sell my old phone on eBay. I keep my hardware in good shape and I’m often surprised at the resale value after 2-3 years. Feels great to recover some of the cost of the upgrade!
I use them. I've actually never bought a smart phone (nor gotten one for "free" due to some contract) because there seem to be so many people willing to stop using functional phones. Currently I'm using an iPhone 5c and don't have any upgrade plans anytime soon.
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I remember reading an article a year or so ago about how asylum live on the welfare afforded to them and their phone bills (a necessary expense) were a huge chunk of it, basically all of them paying well more than I do on my PAYG for similar service. What I see must be the issue is that, without a phone of their own, the cheapest short term option is to sign up for an option that provides a phone.
This immediately limits them from the ultra low budget GiffGaff/Asda/etc type options and will very frequently tie them down to a much less budget friendly carrier if not straight into a contract.
"Secure the Call is a 501(c)(3) charity that provides free 911 emergency-only cell phone to Domestic Violence Centers, Senior Citizen Centers, Police and Sheriff departments."
So this doesn't make sense to me - it doesn't feel they're forced into a corner at all. I'd rather sell the phone and donate money to asylum-seeker supporting charities.
Their problem is that they _can't_ use SIM only options as they need a phone (potentially multiple) too, so it's cheaper in the immediate term to sign up to a £15-20 a month plan that provides a (really crappy) phone than a similar £7 a month one which doesn't.
Of course, on a purely rational level seeing as we're talking about iPhones as opposed to just phones in general, the best option would be sell the iPhone and use the proceeds from it to buy and donate multiple cheaper (but sturdy) Androids
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However, BE CAREFUL, devices with batteries MAY BE DANGEROUS. I have had so many bulging/swollen batteries, even with devices just stored in a drawer. No incident or fires yet fortunately. So always keep an eye on them!
CCTV processing is often done server-side (ZoneMinder, Sinobi, ...), but nowadays "old" devices could do some stuff too. Motion detection is maybe not that intensive, but is hard to pull off (a car passing in the street might change the light on the walls/ceiling, it should not trigger the alarm, dogs/cats, ...). On iOS, you could do face detection using some Apple provided CoreImage components.
A few things I have been missing in the current apps/software: simple way to turn on/off (I had to open/kill apps), use less bandwidth (by pushing to the server only when motion is detected for example, MJPEG stream was about 200Kb/s), play an alarm sound when motion is detected, being able to interact remotely with the device like saying something out loud (if kid came home, triggered the motion detection and forgot to turn off the camera), ...
I wouldn't go for license plates though: you should not point a security camera to the outside/street!
The concept does seem good, they certainly have more capable hardware and cost less than a lot of network attached cameras.
There are also a few open-source projects with this kind feature: StreamIt for example (https://github.com/twittemb/StreamIt), which also provides an MJPEG stream.
This would be the most basic stuff.
MJPEG is however not the most efficient (~200Kb/s networking). There are also some "video" streaming projects like https://github.com/shogo4405/HaishinKit.swift or https://github.com/wlanjie/lf.swift, which provide MP4/RTMP/HLS streams and could be processed with a camera monitoring software like Shinobi (https://shinobi.video).
I hope this helps!
They don't get updates and are not secure to be used as network connected security cameras.
Anyways, always put any device behind a router/firewall (at least when on wi-fi).
Also, prefer an app that pushes (to a remote server, ...), instead of an app that opens ports.
And don't run other apps on the device.
Trade-ins with carriers are big as well, and of course selling them will still net some money as well. You can sell to local stores or online at sites like Swappa.
People who aren't as technical as the typical HN reader often don't know that iPhone, iPad, and laptop batteries are replaceable, and it's usually relatively cheap to do so. Please educate your friends and family members!
Donate to others who would have a need.
I donated my favorite iPhone5s (the best iPhone ever) to my dedicated home helper (yeah ... they exist in this part of the world!)
Wipe thoroughly first, of course.