ScreenWall: Turn Old Phones Into Synced Widgets for Your Space
ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space
I built ScreenWall to help you reuse spare phones, tablets, and monitors as synced displays without installing any apps. By simply opening a browser link, you can pair devices to create clocks, status boards, or ambient walls. This beta tool works with mixed hardware, letting you expand from a single widget to a full multi-screen setup instantly.
The product is meant for real-world leftovers: different screen sizes, bezels, orientations, and device generations.
- joymonger
This looks cool and useful. I'm trying to better understand what's going on behind the scenes.
If the technology is browser-based, why are we being asked to sign up? What are we signing up for?
If the technology runs through third-party infrastructure, is the data e2e encrypted?
- prmoustache
Usually I replace a smartphone because it has some hardware fault that makes it unusable and it is hard to repair or the cost of repair vs capability is not very favorable.
Even if I was replacing smartphone before they died, I would probably sell them anyway. Do people really have various phones in working order waiting in a drawer?
- buibuibui
Oh wow, although I submitted it some days ago, I somehow got on the front page! Thanks for that!
Also as a note: this platform is nowhere near finished! I had this idea in my mind for a long time that I wanted to reuse my old phones and tablets as displays in my home. I also know that finding the right apps for these old platforms is a challenge in itself, that's why I went the route of creating an ES5 (that nobody writes anymore!) web app that most of these devices still support. The client's whole purpose is to display canvas and media files that the server dictates on-demand via websocket, while keeping a synchronized clock.
On Instagram I always saw these very cool widgets like retro clocks, split-flip boards, YouTube subscriber counters that I felt urged to buy. But I thought to myself that the old phones I already have could also do the same.
I am a long-time software engineer myself, but could never take the time to validate whether my ideas work. So I thought, why not try it out with Codex. After long prompting, supervising and correcting, I got a very usable solution that I now pleasantly use myself at home.
- JackMorgan
I've wanted to build this myself for a long time but couldn't figure out how to overcome the spicy pillow problem.
Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I thought it was risky to leave a phone plugged in all the time. Does it need to be a modern version of Android OS that has the smart charging that stops at like 85%?
- buibuibui
I am interested to hear what features you guys want in the next iterations! While building ScreenWall, I actually had art installations, home dashboards and train depature info screens in mind. Interacting with the screens and triggering events across other screens is also in the pipeline. Would be cool, if you can give me some crazy ideas, so I can prepare the client runtime better.