While you can hack Doom onto pretty much any device, figuring out what to do if you want to reuse your old devices for something a little more useful is slightly more challenging. That said, the hacking and homebrew community is pretty awesome, and the chances are you'll be able to find a selection of projects for almost any device you want to hack to make more use of. It's a great way of saving money while keeping those old devices out of landfills, and we've rounded up some ideas to get you started.

6 Smartphones

Use the camera as a webcam or get even more creative

Even older smartphones tend to have fairly powerful components, and whether they run iOS or Android, there are a ton of things you can repurpose them for. I've used smartphones as my webcam, which is one really quick and simple way to use their cameras, but there are a huge number of other things they can also do with some work. Creating a quick home security camera is also a good use, but you'll want to make sure it stays plugged in.

You could also turn it into a Pi-hole to remove advertising from your network or run Linux on your phone instead of Android. You could even turn that smartphone into a home server to store files or run a Minecraft server so you can play with your friends. This is only a very small subsection of the number of things a smartphone can be hacked into doing, especially if it runs Android, as it's an easier platform to work with when you want to turn it into something else.

5 Tablets

Control your smart home and more👁 A tablet serving as a security computer next to a phone viewing the camera feed

The larger touchscreens of tablets lend themselves to a wide range of hacked uses, from using them as a second monitor for your laptop to turning them into a smart home hub to control your various devices. The smart home control might not even need more setup, as HomeKit-compatible devices are easily controlled on iPads, and plenty of smart devices integrate into the Google Home app on Android devices. You could also turn them into a smart calendar to organize your family's week, as long as you mount them near a power socket so they can stay plugged in.

I've used old tablets in the kitchen to follow recipes, and it's much better than printing out reams of paper. The bonus is that, as it's already an old device, you don't care that much about getting splats of whatever you're cooking on it, and you can usually just wipe it clean afterward. They're also fantastic for turning into digital photo frames, as it's a shame that we don't often glance at the hundreds of photos we take on our devices, or as a display to show the output of a baby monitor or home security camera.

4 Laptops

From servers to picture frames, old laptops can be reused

Even once laptops are no longer functional for productivity tasks, they still have tons of other uses. Like any other computer, they can be turned into a home server, ready to store files, or even run gaming servers. Or you can use one to start your home lab journey, because you don't need a powerful server PC when you're first starting out and learning the ropes.

You could also turn a laptop into a digital picture frame, but if your old laptop has a broken screen, that won't work very well. In that case, you could use it as a headless workstation, plugged into whatever external display you have handy. That's what our own Brady Snyder did with a broken M1 MacBook Air he picked up on eBay, and it worked fantastically. The point is that as long as the laptop still boots up, it can most likely be turned into something useful, or if not, any upgradeable parts inside can get taken out for future use before the rest of the laptop is recycled.

3 TVs

Magic Mirror is a fun way to make a smart screen

If you have an old TV with an intact screen, turning it into a smart dashboard with Magic Mirror is a fantastic way to keep it out of the scrap heap. Sure, it was designed to go behind a smart mirror, and if you have the woodworking skills you could still do that with the TV behind the semi-silvered mirror, but it's still awesome for having a large customizable dashboard for home organization. You'll need a SBC like the Raspberry Pi 5, because that's the hardware the developer makes the software for, and a little bit of time to get everything running and customized. But once finished, you've got a huge dashboard to show the weather, calendar appointments, and more, and it didn't cost much to put together.

2 PCs or Macs

Old computing hardware is easy to repurpose

PCs and the hardware inside don't always age well or at all, and it can be tricky figuring out what to do with them once you upgrade. If the chassis is particularly nice, like the cheese grater Mac Pro, with a few tools and some time, you can put your new, modern gaming rig into one of the nicest cases ever made.

Even without doing some hacking with power tools, you can still repurpose that old PC for any number of other projects, like an AI image generator, or a Google Drive replacement to reduce your dependence on cloud services or into a retro gaming console to revisit the games of your childhood or introduce them to your kids. Another fantastic idea is to turn it into a Home Assistant server, to control your smart home devices and combine the multiple systems into one easily used dashboard.

1 Disposable vapes

Even when empty they can still be upcycled

Some supposedly one-use devices, like disposable vape pens, are still perfectly usable with a little bit of ingenuity. The rechargeable batteries inside them have many more charge cycles left once the product is used up, and can be pulled out and put back together into a larger battery pack to keep your other devices juiced up. Of course, we wouldn't suggest everyone tries this, as lithium-ion batteries are dangerous if the soldering needed goes wrong, but it's yet another example of how some devices can be repurposed into something completely different with the right mindset.

Hacking your old devices gives them new utility and keeps them from becoming e-waste

If you like the idea of having a project on the go, any of these ideas for hacking your old devices into something new should get the creative juices flowing. They're all interesting examples of what you can do with old devices that aren't simply selling, recycling, or giving them away. Reducing the amount of e-waste that we create is an awesome thing to do, so don't be too hasty to throw older tech away when it might still have some utility.