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My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server
How I transformed my old iPhone 8 into a solar-powered Vision OCR server using Apple's native framework and an EcoFlow River 2 Pro. Running 24/7 for months, processing thousands of images while completely off-grid.
iPhone 8 running SwiftUI app with Apple Vision OCR EcoFlow River 2 Pro (768Wh) + 220W solar panel Mini PC handling web services and API routing Tailscale network connecting everything iPhone 8 running OCR server: ~3-5W during processing, ~1W idle Mini PC (handling web server duties): ~15-25W depending on load Total daily consumption: ~1.2kWh average per day (based on actual TP-Link smart plug data) EcoFlow River 2 Pro capacity: 768Wh Solar panel input: 220W max capacity (on a good day in Canada, so… rarely) The dashboard shows I’ve had 5,061 users this week, and looking at the activity graph, there’s definitely a pattern - peak usage during business hours with some interesting spikes that probably correlate with when I’m batch processing content.
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