Live Counter Revives Old Nokia Phone’s Utility

Old hardware you may have on hand cannot only inspire projects in their own right, but can facilitate the realization of any ideas you have been planning. Using a Nokia N900, [MakerMan] concocted a light-up sign with a live subscriber and view count of his videos.

[MakerMan] milled out the logo used on the sign with his DIY CNC machine — built from rotary bearings and recycled stepper motors off industrial Xerox printers. The meticulous application of a jigsaw, rotary tool, and grinder resulted in a sturdy frame for the sign while a few strips of RGB LEDs imbue it with an inspiring glow. All that was left was to mount the phone in place and tape it for good measure.

Milling MakerMan Live Counter Logo[MakerMan] mentions that near the end of the 4-5 day build the phone ran into some issues which he doesn’t detail. He does note that he managed to underclock the phone to use less power, which may have played a part. Despite that, the Nokia lives up to its legacy of sturdy utility — even if it isn’t for its intended purpose — and as a powerful reminder to keep on hacking and making!

In the past, we’ve featured a few different Nokia hacks — from turning one into an Arduino shield, to using their displays in projects, to detailing a serious SMS blocking exploit back in the day.

7 thoughts on “Live Counter Revives Old Nokia Phone’s Utility

  1. If there were only a phone to replace my Linux N900. Android, even Cyanogen with F-droid repos vs Play is still weird with surfaceflinger instead of x11, not to mention the bother getting all of the great FOSS apps out there easy to build on linux from OpenSCAD to the Arduino IDE are hobbled or unavailable except someones closed crapware build on android. My still everyday N900 can be SSHed into and bossed around like any server using regular linux utilities and features more and better apps than I have ever seen even on Google-Play, certainly no adware bloat like most of the play junk. I think the biggest problem is getting functional (bin blob) drivers which should get better once Google mainlines the Android kernel.
    Why does MSFT have to ruin everything beautiful, ugh Elop and his burning platform delusions when Nokia still had a larger smartphone share than even APPL.
    This is a cool hack but sad to see a N900 recycled like this when there is no upgrade replacement available.

    1. I still use my N900 as my everyday phone and I wouldn’t downgrade to an iPhone 7 or Galaxy S7 or any other iOS or Android device even if someone gave me one for free.

      1. I still use my N900 for taking photos because `sshfs -o reconnect` means I can just browse photos in `/media/N900/` on my laptop but sadly I’d still rather have my cheapo Huawei Y6 in my pocket despite being a privacy nightmare because its nicer to use. Maybe when my Neo900 arrives then I’ll switch back.

    1. I know what you mean, this thing is amazingly fast! It’s like superman is carving it out himself.
      Otherwise he must have sped up the video… but that would be cheating, so I’m sure this is all real.

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