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Things you can make from old, dead laptops

Feb 19, 2020
Laptops are useful

things

during your working life, but if they break or simply become too old and slow to do anything productive, what can you do well with them if it is the latter situation and they are too old and too slow to do a real job? There are still some very useful use cases that you can use which I will go into more detail about later, but if you have a broken one you will have a lot of fun as there are many

things

you can discover. of

dead

laptops

, as there are still many useful components and materials inside waiting to be reused, so let's get creative.
things you can make from old dead laptops
This video is sponsored by Squarespace, so the first task is to open them so we can access the components, which usually involves unscrewing any screws you can find on the back and separating the plastics, this process should continue while you carefully separate all the internal parts, after which we are ready to start reusing them, as you can see, there are quite a few, most of which can be put to some type of use, although the first component I want to focus on is the speakers. Some

laptops

, particularly those made around 2008 where media playback was a big focus, had ridiculously good speakers and some even featured mini subwoofers as they are usually built. in their own sealed cabinets, you don't need to build a speaker box for them and they can be used as is mine in particular, they even have extra bass ports which is great now as they are physically quite flat and have a interesting way. when I put them together I glued them together and soldered them to a mini bluetooth amplifier which I also glued in place since this amplifier runs on five volts I sold it on a USB socket so I could plug it into a USB battery bank for Now to

make

it look a little neater, I then took some plastic strips and glued them to fit around the perimeter of the speakers and after attaching some thin fabric to act as a grill, it could be mounted directly to a wall as your bluetooth.
things you can make from old dead laptops

More Interesting Facts About,

things you can make from old dead laptops...

It can be connected wirelessly to a phone or tablet and used to listen to music podcasts while being discreet and actually has very impressive sound for its size thanks to the well-designed speakers. It doesn't hurt to move on to the next project I want to focus on. The laptop cooling system removes heat from particularly hot running integrated circuits by using heat pipes that move heat to a set of fins which then transfer the heat to air which is blown through them by an accompanying fan, as they can handle quite a bit. a lot of heat production, they are actually perfect for reusing to cool high power LEDs.
things you can make from old dead laptops
Small LEDs like this have several power level options and since mine actually used 10 watts of power each, they would burn out very quickly if lit on their own but once mounted. on the thermal plates with a little firmly conductive glue and with the fan connected to rotate, they can be powered indefinitely thanks to the high level of cooling. If you end up doing this yourself, don't forget to use an appropriate LED driver circuit or you could still fry the LED with too much current. I attached mine to a curved piece of aluminum to

make

a stand and it turned out to look great thanks to different materials and a visible cooling system, making it a fantastic light to use while working. but it could also make a great desk lamp, especially if you're interested in computers and want a lamp made from recycled parts Now that we're on the topic of lighting, laptop screens in particular are worth salvaging, even if They are broken. like this one, this is because when the LCD layer is removed, you are left with a variety of potentially useful diffusion sheets, Fresnel lenses and an acrylic back panel that work together to distribute the backlight evenly and make the best use of it.
things you can make from old dead laptops
Leave them inside the display case and connect the PCB at the back to activate the built-in backlight of the display. This leaves you with a soft, diffuse light source that you can then put to a variety of uses, for example you can use it as tracking. Backlight it or mount it on the wall to make it a faux window, you can even print your favorite images on thin paper and now light them up for eye-catching wall art. It's pretty cool to help connect them to work this way. I have a separate dedicated video. on the topic which you can find a link to in the description now, if none of these interest you, you can remove the various layers and use them with LED strips as they have adhesive on the back and can be cut to any length.
One idea is to tape a short piece to one side of a screen diffusion sheet by adding some double-sided tape to the opposite side. This allows the sheet to be rolled to create a cylinder which, once mounted on a wall, diffuses the light emitted by the LED. strip so that it significantly reduces glare and makes it a pretty stylish wall lamp, even better, although front lenses are used for this as the lenses bend the light and cause some pretty interesting distortions that when wrapped around the LEDs , they create a really nice glowing rainbow effect that changes depending on the angle you look at it from.
It's still nice to look at, but now it looks great visually, as well as for the acrylic back panel of the display. This is where you can get really creative for this cover. the sheet with tape on both sides and then trace a pattern or shape on it, now cut roughly around it with a rotary tool and then remove the remaining material with a file until you reach the traced line, the tape can then be peeled off leaving it with your shape now, to make this more special, we will illuminate it, for which we will use a couple of small LED filaments.
These run on around 3 volts of power so they are safe to touch and run cool. What you need to do is make some slots for these LEDs in a piece of wood and then cut a base shape around them. I dyed mine to give it a little more character. The LED filaments can now be soldered onto some wires and pushed through two holes that need to be made in the slots, once connected they will light up, meaning the last job is to glue the acrylic cutout in place, the light The LED enters this cutout at the bottom and disperses, meaning the whole thing becomes illuminated internally, giving it a really cool little feature.
The creative possibilities here are endless and could make really nice DIY gifts for people. Now, if your screen is not broken instead of dismantling it, you may want to get a separate controller board for it. It would allow you to use it as a standard standalone computer monitor. Again I have some videos on how to do this, after which they can be used to make, for example, a dual screen laptop allowing for greater productivity and improved ergonomics or even a smart mirror where you can watch YouTube videos while you you brush your teeth or shave as usual.
There are links to these in the description if you are interested. Now, the next project we're going to do requires using one of the smallest discrete components you can. We can find it on our laptop and its location may vary, so you will have to search a little, but what you are looking for is a small cylinder with two small wires connected to it and this is in fact a microphone. These may sound very good, proof of that. is that the little lapel microphone I'm using now was made from a laptop microphone I took apart several years ago and it sounds so good that I've used it on almost every video I've made since.
So hopefully this is a testament to how good they can potentially sound now since most of you won't be able to use a small lapel mic. Instead, I'll show you how to make a small clip-on communication microphone that you can clip to your headset and use for extremely clear calls or even communicate well with your teammates in games, making this pretty simple, first requires Have the microphone cables soldered to a shielded audio cable. This shielded cable prevents hum and interference noise, so it is very important now that we can thread. This cable runs through a small piece of plastic tubing leaving a short piece of cable at the end to adjust the position of the microphone and mount it to your headphones.
The easiest way is to mold a small sugar clip. Once dry, the tube can be slid into place. and adjusts as needed, although that's essentially it for headphones, the microphone still needs amplification, as computers generally don't have very good microphone preamps, so their microphone inputs usually introduce a lot of hiss into the signal. Audio. The preamp I recommend can work with all five. volts provided from a USB port and it is quite easy to connect by looking at it closely you should be able to see some small jumpers that allow us to adjust the behavior of the amplification by controlling both the overall volume and also the reaction speed of the board.
Auto Gain Control This auto gain control can reduce the volume if the input is too loud, so the sound will never cut out if you talk too loud or shout Once covered, it can be connected to the USB port and microphone input of a computer and then using it as a decent sounding cheap microphone setup, how does it sound personally? I think it sounds pretty good, especially compared to most headset mics out there, and the automatic gain control on the amp is doing a great job, plus I can talk pretty quietly and it's still pretty much the same. same volume as when I talk very loudly, so that should make it better for the listeners on the other end.
Not bad for reusing a small microphone from a laptop. This is the hard drive and is where all the data is stored. The laptop is stored, so if you have important files, now is the time to connect it to an external USB box so you can access and back them up. Honestly if the drive has a reasonable capacity this should be your main use case as it is the most useful for storing data now if the drive is broken or perhaps too small a capacity to be worth using for anything another thing. Here are some interesting and fun projects you can do by dismantling one to get inside one you will need a suitable screwdriver bit which can usually be found in a multi bit set and once you are inside you will see the plates and head assembly when power on, this head slides across the surface of the unit to read. and write data while the plates spin pretty fast.
One trick is to cut a ring of sandpaper and glue it to the top plate. This can then be used to clean tools or sharpen things like a pencil, to be fair this is a bit tricky. It's much faster to just use a pencil sharpener, but it's still pretty novel. However, you can unscrew these plates and as you can see, they are very shiny as they also have a nice ring. You could make a little wind chime with them. and they disperse light very well when in the sun, you can even make a small analog mirror watch with one that would make a nice gift for someone who is interested in their technology.
Now, coming back to the disk, there remains the head, now its movement is derived from some coils under these powerful magnets, so if you solder some wires to these coils, the head can be forced back and forth by applying a voltage. If we install an audio amplifier on it, it will actually vibrate along with the sound signal like a speaker, if you're wondering, it's audible but sounds very tinny, adding a small paper cone improves things, but even though it has a heavy base of close, it quickly goes out and sounds tinny again further away and sounds horrible again, although this is not our goal.
Since we've already made a speaker anyway and the actual plan is much more interesting, so to start we'll need a small laser pointer. To disassemble it, we can find the laser diode along with a driver circuit, since the diode is very light. stick it to the head so that it also vibrates along with the sound signal. Can you see where it's going? Pointing it at a wall creates a visible analog vu meter that tracks the beat of the music. It looks really cool in person and I think it's a great use of a

dead

drive, so now it's time to talk about batteries, now that most older laptops actually have a battery pack made up internally of battery cellsindividual 18650s, which is great news for us because they are really easy to reuse and The challenge, however, is getting them out of the plastic case as it is completely sealed and there are no screws or anything that you can undo and then open, for which just involves breaking the plastic and separating it.
You run the risk of puncturing the battery cells and also causing short circuits so only do this if you know exactly what you are doing and as with everything of course it is at your own risk once you are inside now you will They can be carefully separated by cutting the wires and conductors that hold them together. Now it is easy to cause short circuits here, so you need to be especially careful and before you start, make sure you follow the circuit to start in the right place with the cells now separated, each one of which you need.
It should be checked to make sure its voltages are 2.8 volts or higher. Lithium cells degrade and become unstable if they drop below this voltage, so never use a battery that is below 2.8 volts, as mine were all safely above this value and were They can be reused while you could use them in any number of projects, you will need to implement protection circuitry to not over discharge them and to ensure they all stay balanced while charging, this can get quite complicated so I suggest getting some empty singles. Cell battery bank cases are super cheap and have built-in protection circuitry that shuts them off when the cell reaches 2.8 volts.
You can then use them to charge your devices or power things like the speaker project we did earlier. Battery banks can be quite expensive, so simply getting the cases and reusing an old laptop. Putting in batteries like this is a great way to save some money, so far we've done quite a few cool things, but before we go ahead and show you the latest reuse project that will clearly lead me to show you what to do with the old ones. but otherwise they still work like laptops, I want to talk about this video sponsor. Squarespace, from how to create your own online store to creating a personal portfolio.
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It's also worth noting that if you're new to website design and need help, they're excellent guides and 24/7 customer support, meaning you'll never be stuck wondering how to do something, as well. What, what are you waiting for? Visit squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready. to launch, visit squarespace.com DIY benefits for 10 off your first website or domain purchase and you can find a link to that below, so again, that's squarespace.com DIY benefits 10 off, so the last repurposing project I want to cover is perhaps the one that will save you the most money, which is actually repurposing laptop webcams and using them to create a security system for home.
This is quite easy to do as laptop webcams generally use the USB protocol, meaning they can simply be soldered to a USB cable after which they can be used on any PC as a standard video input. They can then be placed in various locations around your home, which can be done discreetly as they are very small and discreet once connected to a computer running some software. Like contecam, webcams can be monitored and recorded and the software can even notify you by email of any movement captured by the cameras. For more information, you guessed it, there is a link to a full video on the topic in the description, now the computer you are on All the webcams that can be connected do not have to be particularly powerful, so it is actually a great use of an older one that still works, but you don't know what to do with some more ideas, especially if the OS is old too. is to use it as a retro gaming machine as some games don't work on modern PCs, old laptops can also be a lifesaver for specific old hardware, for example I have a spectrophotometer that measures the precise wavelengths of light and builds a It's nice to have a graph of your brightness, but the accompanying software only works on older 32-bit versions of Windows, so it needs to run on all hardware to use it.
Another thing you could do is use one as a multimedia PC which I actually took. I made a separate one a while ago for this task and to make it look a little nicer I transplanted the hardware into a new case built from scratch so it wouldn't be an eyesore in the living room, the last thing I'm going to suggest is that literally, You simply give it to someone who doesn't have a computer, whether it's a young person who needs to learn how computers work or an older person who just needs access to their emails, they may have more patience to deal with the limitations and could It will be very useful for them, so that's it for this video.
I think we've done some really interesting things and if you have more ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments below. If you want to support my work, you can do so. do it by visiting patreon.com, DIY perks and thank you very much if you decide to support me there, but other than that, you can always consider hitting like and maybe consider subscribing too, but as for this video, it's over so I'll go now. Hope to see you next time, bye for now.

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