A video about using a smartphone as a controller in a project. Could be of interest to someone looking to incorporate a touch display to a module?
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As much as i love the idea to rescue all this e-waste, Android is such a hellscape. Software support gets dropped very fast, and all require bespoke solutions to software and harwdare issues.
I have a decade-old low-budget Android tablet, still kind of works. That is, the hardware still boots, the screen still works with some discoloration, the battery still holds a charge… And no software works anymore. The Play Store crashes. USB connection won’t mount as a file system. Side-loading APKs from the micro SD card will sort of work, so i could install F-Droid, only to see that nothing on F-Droid would support the hardware.
After hours of work i managed to install a PDF reader, an image viewer, and a function generator (outputting precise audio waveforms).
And all hardware has different steps to root it, and closed hardware that requires binary blobs, so it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to make a universal-ish Android ROM for old devices to turn it into a generic computing platform.
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That is kind of a shame - I was toying with the idea of possibly using an old android phone on a module.
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It was here on this very group that I was introduced to both touchOSC and mobmuplat. Both allow you to use all of the sensors on an old android phone as a midi controller.
I’ve used OSC as a midi controller and mobmuplat to perform Pure Data sketches.
Linking old phones together via midi is as easy as adding an otg cable and a usb midi.
I take in all my family’s old phones for the android backline!
Oh and midi works over BLE so you can make some expressive shtuff.
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One cool thing to run on old Droids is Caustic, little DAW that’s toaster-compatible and sounds great. Reminiscent of Reason on PC, somewhat.
No longer updated, but that’s a good thing, the software is complete and stable and needs nothing more, and it only requires Android 2.2, and has no aggressive nickel and dime monetization bs, just buy an unlock key if you want to save files.
Actually, thinking about this makes me wonder if Android can receive USB MIDI from a cable also carrying current to charge it? Maybe you could just add a little arduino running CV to MIDI USB to turn e-waste into a cheap sound source that way.
Edit: just realized - Caustic is sadly no longer up for sale, it was pulled from the play store 
no more way to get it legally
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Sadly, yes. Mobile device support is dogshit, not just bcs of greedy companies being greedy (that too), but also due to very nature of mobile devices - they need to be compact, which demands trade-offs. Fuckton of trade-offs…
I still use caustic despite it being pulled. Midi over BLE and via an otg cable and a usb midi adapter make it a very useful module
Yeah, Caustic is great app, best mobile DAW. Made at least one recorded cover using it:
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