Upcycling broken laptops
*planted: 24/07/2021last tended: 27/11/2021
First thing - try and fix it, and donate it to someone else! But if it's beyond repair, there's a bunch of things that you can do with individual parts.
This video from DIY Perks has a whole bunch of cool ideas for projects to do with parts from end-of-life laptops: Things you can make from old, dead laptops
- turn the speakers into portable speakers
- use the heatsink to cool high-power LEDs and make a lamp
- screen where the LCD is broken - use the rest of it with the soft diffused light, make a tracing backlight, or a false window
- or use the various bits from the display assembly
- diffusion sheets to make a nice lamp
- fresnel lenses to make another nice lamp
- get creative with the acrylic and make a feature light
- if the screen is OK, turn it into a secondary display of some kind
- make a headset/comms mic from the laptop's microphone
- storage drive
- external drive in USB caddy if it's working
- a gimmicky tool cleaner
- mirror to make an analog clock
- turn the read/write head in to laser VU meter
- batteries
- take the cells from the batteries into mini battery banks to power the other things
- webcams turned in to a security system
1. Elsewhere
1.1. In my garden
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