Mini data centers: converted disused smartphones monitor the oceans
Old smartphones are to be reused. Researchers have therefore converted four of them into a mini data center that collects and evaluates environmental data.
The mini data center bundles the power of four disused smartphones and collects data.
(Image: University of Tartu)
A research team from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu has found a way to put discarded smartphones to good use. The scientists connected four old smartphones together and created a kind of mini data center to collect environmental data underwater.
The number of disused smartphones languishing in drawers around the world is constantly increasing. In Germany alone, there are around 195 million old devices (as of 2025) that are no longer being used. In the worst case, they end up on the scrap heap; in the best case, they are recycled. Either way, this waste of resources is a heavy burden on the environment.
However, researchers at the University of Tartu have found a better way to reuse old smartphones, as they write in the study “Supporting Sustainable Computing by Repurposing E-Waste Smartphones as Tiny Data Centers”, which was published in IEEE Pervasive Computing. They created a prototype in which four smartphones were connected to bundle their computing power and create a mini data center. The researchers packed the smartphone electronics into a 3D-printed housing. The original batteries were removed to eliminate potential risks to the environment. They were replaced with external batteries.
Mini data center for environmental monitoring
The researchers used the prototype underwater. The device collected environmental data in the form of photos, which were also recorded and analyzed on-board. This also saves on the external computing power required in data centers and contributes to a better environmental footprint of the devices. The cost of the conversion per smartphone is 8 euros.
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The researchers are killing two birds with one stone with this decentralized mini data center: on the one hand, old smartphones can be reused and the amount of electronic waste reduced. Secondly, the old devices are given a useful task and relieve the burden on conventional data centers.
However, the use of the small smartphone data center is not limited to environmental monitoring tasks. The researchers also see other application scenarios. For example, they could be used for decentralized data evaluation in research or for real-time passenger counting in public transport to optimize public transport networks with the data.
(olb)
