Samsung has Launched a Continuation to its Galaxy Upcycling Video Series

The video lessons are held within the framework of the Samsung Innovation Campus educational initiative «Samsung IT School».

Samsung Electronics has announced a new series of practice-oriented video course «Galaxy Upcycling — the new life of an old smartphone,» which tell about the ways to make a useful device out of a used smartphone. The videos will be released on the YouTube channel of «Samsung IT School».

Widely acclaimed over the past few years, the concept of Upcycling aims to reuse old things in a new quality and to popularize the idea of conscious, lean consumption based on the model of a closed-loop economy.

The first video lecture in the new Galaxy Upcycling series is about creating an amateur-class spectrometer out of a smartphone. The device allows to measure the wavelength of light and make various observations. The lecture demonstrates several experiments with different light sources (CFL, LED and incandescent lamps, sunlight, and smartphone screen), which show that each source has a different wavelength spectrum. Viewers can repeat all the experiments themselves, for example, by creating their own spectrometer from an old smartphone and simple materials at hand.

This series of lectures «Galaxy Upcycling — the new life of the old smartphone» will include several more videos which will be about the use of the smartphone as an additional interface to the computer, as well as for use in physics experiments.

The course «Galaxy Upcycling — the new life of an old smartphone» was made by the specialists of the Samsung R&D Russia (SRR). The introductory part of the course describes the concept of Upcycling and the existing ways of using a smartphone. The basis of the course are practice-oriented lessons on how to turn an old Android gadget into a new device: a mini projector, clock, a smart garland with SmartThings support, etc.

The video course will be of interest to everyone who likes to make things with their own hands and wants to support an environmentally friendly way of life, extending the life of things. No special knowledge is required to master the course program, because the material is presented in accessible language and the tasks and examples are easy to repeat on your own mobile devices.

The new video course is part of the international Samsung Galaxy Upcycling program. The Galaxy Upcycling program is recognized worldwide. It aims to extend the life of mobile devices by using used smartphones as Internet of Things devices with new functionality — for example, surveillance cameras or eye disease diagnostic tools.

The idea of reusing smartphones is also the basis of many works by graduates of the Samsung IT Academy and Samsung IT School socio-educational programs. For example, in 2020, MIREA student Alexander Levandrovsky became one of the winners of the «Samsung IT Academy» inter-university competition with his graduation project «Assistant for people with disabilities». The project involves using a smartphone as the main node of a wearable system to facilitate the navigation of visually impaired people in the city.

In 2019, the Grand Prix of the All-Russian contest «IT School chooses the strongest!» was awarded to the project of Sofia Tkachenko, a schoolgirl from Rostov-on-Don. This application for Android allows you to create one big screen for displaying videos and images on several smartphones and tablets of any size.

The course «Galaxy Upcycling — the new life of the old smartphone» is part of the «Samsung IT School» and «Samsung IT Academy» programs, which are implemented as part of the global Samsung Innovation Campus project. In 2021, Samsung was awarded the Runet Prize — the most prestigious award of the Russian Internet in the Education and HR category for this project.

Samsung IT School is currently accepting aplications for the 2022/2023 academic year. You can apply for training at the program’s website: https://innovationcampus.ru/