this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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Solarpunk

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What Solarpunk changes have you made in your daily life? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by Capitanmaroon@lemmy.world to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net
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I feel like I always think of solar punk as a macro thing where a lot has to change but there are still smaller wins we can implement, what have you been doing?

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[–] dihutenosa@piefed.social 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Besides gardening? I built a low-power, right-sized server out of an ancient phone. It draws around a watt of power, less when idle.

[–] scott_anon_21@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Any DIY links that you have found are useful for this (before I start re’searching’. )

[–] dihutenosa@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I don't have any handy "start to finish" guides for this. I suppose I should start a blog, or something :)

Basic steps:

  1. get a phone that can run PostmarketOS - https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

it does not need to run it perfectly. Camera, cell modem, even screen are completely optional. It must charge and do WiFi, only.
2. flash PostmarketOS on the phone. Get SSH access - if the screen doesn't work, use USB ethernet emulation (during pmbootstrap init, choose USB mode = "developer"), log in, then nmtui to enter your WiFi password.
3. optionally, reduce maximum battery charge/voltage, to prolong battery health. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Battery_Voltage_Reduction
4. hooray, now you have a server. Proceed setting up as if it were a VPS. It's a variant of Alpine Linux - any Alpine guide will work fine, or you could use Docker or Podman.

Now this is something I haven't done, but you could - hook it up to a solar panel. Rely on solar during the day, and on the phone battery until it lasts. Write a shell script / cronjob / systemd unit to suspend the phone when battery level gets low. It'll get a wakeup event from hardware, when solar comes back (hopefully).

[–] Capitanmaroon@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What are you using it for?

[–] dihutenosa@piefed.social 5 points 4 days ago

Offsite monitoring. It runs Prometheus, Grafana, etc, and watches the rest of my selfhostables. Sends me alerts when stuff goes down.