How to reuse smartphones as IOT nodes

In 2015, 280 million smartphones were replaced worldwide without being recycled. This is the information that the founder of the Phonvert project, Tomo Kihara, shared at the South by Southwest 2016. Many of these smartphones were only a year or two old, still functional, and packed with various valuable sensors: cameras, accelerometers, touch screens, or Bluetooth radios.

Tokyo-based non-profit project Phonvert wants to extend the life of these smartphones and has developed an open source software platform that can turn retired smartphones into Internet of Things nodes. The idea is that, if the software is installed on a smartphone, it can be used for various day-to-day uses such as a camera that monitors the baby and senses when it cries, an electronic peephole that notifies us when someone knocks on the door, or a gadget that controls the refrigerator.