Cellphone Crowd-pleasers

When you start to think about the cellphone waste our society produces it can be quite daunting. How many cell phones have you had in recent years? Now multiply that by five billion cellphone subscribers. [Anthony Goh] and [Neil Mendoza] found something to do with a very minuscule portion of those left-overs; building interactive birds out of the old parts. You’ll have to check out their accomplishments in the video after the break as the image above doesn’t do them justice. Interactivity for the exhibit is provided by an Arduino, which communicates with one working phone via a serial connection. The phone can still make and receive calls, and controls parts from other, less functional cellphones. They can call each other, or receive calls from the audience.

Yes, there is art in garbage. But there’s also a lot of hacks waiting to happen. Take a look at the Nokia cellphone LCD feature and then start scavenging.

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/15769292]

11 thoughts on “Cellphone Crowd-pleasers

  1. What about reflashing working ones to custom firm/software or OS. 802.11=wireless speaker / camera / microphone / monitor / controller for X, I/O / USB on-the-go = mobile I/O for X, seems to me the embedded processor and abilities of even older phones should allow for great platforms, and of course parts scavenging.
    Has anyone done this, or is working on it? My programming skills are limited and obsolete otherwise… (thank you C Sharp 101…)

  2. I’ve had two cellphones _in my life_. And only got a new one because the screen cracked on my old one (and the ‘new’ one was actually an old one a friend had laying around). Of course, I’ve only had a cell phone at all for about 5 years. My current phone is Verizon’s original ‘The V’, if anyone remembers that. LG VX9800. From around 2005 I think.

  3. i’d say about 10 in 5 years, but its ok because about half of them were stolen lol. my favorite part of an old cellphone is the micro:motor. i wanna buy some of those motors

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