In the first part, «The Second Life of a Tablet», we settled the fundamentals: almost no tablet in the drawer is broken. It was abandoned by its software — and with a free operating system and a single, fixed job it can keep working for years. «Give the old device a new job», we said. That was the theory.
This post is the practice. Because at RevampIT two things meet that rarely come together: we repair tablets — and we build the software a business runs on. Device intake, time tracking, marketplace, all developed in-house and open source. Lay the two on top of each other and something obvious yet often overlooked appears: our own refurbished tablets become work tools for our own software. Two resources we already have in the building combine into a third — at a cost near zero.
Here are the concrete jobs.
Four terminals from our own operation
1. The capture terminal at device intake
Every donated device has to be recorded: manufacturer, model, condition, photos. On a laptop that's typing. On a tablet bolted to the workbench it's a single motion.
Our device intake supports four input paths — text, photo, file and voice — and in all of them an AI fills the same product record. On the tablet that means: the built-in camera photographs the incoming device, or you simply speak the key facts («Lenovo ThinkPad, good condition, 16 gigabytes, small scratches on the lid»), and the record is there. The system then prints or shows a QR device label. No switching between mouse, keyboard and camera — the tablet is the camera, the microphone and the screen in one, right where the device lands on the table.
A refurbished tablet at intake replaces a whole station of laptop, webcam and barcode printer — and does it more mobile and faster.
2. The wall clock
This is the job with the greatest reach beyond us. Our time tracking has a simple core: «Start shift» on arrival, «End shift» on leaving. One tap, done. A wall-mounted tablet at the entrance is the ideal device for exactly that — a time clock that can do nothing else and needs to do nothing else.
You tap on the way in, you tap on the way out. The timecard fills itself, the monthly report too. A commercial time clock costs several hundred francs and does exactly that — an old tablet in kiosk mode costs the refurbishment and delivers the same, plus notes, categories and a report nobody has to retype.
And here it gets interesting for others: wherever people come and go often, it's the same device. The restaurant, where the kitchen and service team clock in and out each shift. The workshop paid by the hour. The shop with part-time shifts. The care home with rotating duties. A tablet on the wall, one app, one tap — the expensive, proprietary time clock becomes redundant.
3. The inspection and warehouse terminal
The QR label from step 1 is more than a sticker. Scan it with the tablet camera and the device's pipeline view opens directly — inspection checklist, status, price. That turns a second, light tablet into a mobile inspection station: you walk through the warehouse with it, scan a device, tick off the passed tests, and the change is instantly in the system. No paper, no later re-entry. The device and its digital twin stay in lockstep.
4. The info and feedback point in the shop
In the shop, a tablet can stand as an info and feedback terminal: it shows the current marketplace stock as a self-service catalogue, collects customer feedback, or answers common questions about repair, opening hours and offerings through our AI assistant «Hirn». Customers waiting for advice browse at the terminal — and see exactly the devices refurbished two rooms over.
Why the old tablet is the right device for this
All four roles share the same profile: a single job, fixed in one place, usually plugged in. That's exactly the pattern a «too slow» tablet is perfect for — the tired battery is irrelevant when the device hangs plugged into the wall, and the compute of a five-year-old handles a web interface with ease.
The technical path is the one from the first part: where needed, install a lean, free operating system like LineageOS or /e/OS (especially if the device goes online), then lock the tablet to that one application via kiosk mode — screen pinning or an open-source kiosk app on Android, Guided Access on the iPad. What remains is a terminal that does exactly one thing for years and can't be repurposed.
And the environmental case is clear-cut. Most of a device's CO₂ footprint is created in manufacturing, before it's ever switched on — for a tablet, depending on model and methodology, roughly two-thirds to over nine-tenths. A refurbished tablet as a terminal replaces a purpose-bought piece of kiosk hardware and avoids its entire manufacturing emissions. At the same time a device stays in use that would otherwise have landed in the 77.7-percent waste stream. No new purchase, no e-waste — the double win from the first part, here in the workplace.
For your business: the same idea, your use case
You don't have to be an IT company to use this. The rule of thumb is simple: wherever a recurring action happens at a fixed point, an old tablet can take it over.
- Restaurant and hospitality: time clock for the team, reservation display at the entrance, ordering or feedback tablet at the table.
- Shop and retail: price lookup, self-service catalogue, customer feedback, a simple till.
- Workshop and trades: time and job capture, checklists, material scanner.
- Practice and care: self check-in at reception, shift capture, info board.
- School, library, makerspace: catalogue and lending station, sign-in terminal, learning station.
Each of these jobs today often runs on expensive special-purpose hardware — or not at all, because it «isn't worth it». A refurbished tablet in kiosk mode shifts that maths: the hardware is nearly free, the software is open source and licence-free, and the result is more robust than yet another open device anyone can reconfigure.
Can we turn this into know-how?
Yes — and that's the strategically interesting part. We already have all four ingredients in the building:
- The devices. Donated tablets that end up with us anyway.
- The refurbishment. Repair, battery swap and reflash are our core craft and our Repair Café.
- The kiosk know-how. The path from old device to locked single-purpose terminal — documented in the first part.
- The software. Increasingly our own platform, which provides the job.
Put together, that makes an offer few others can bundle this way: a turnkey terminal — refurbished tablet, kiosk setup and matching application — at a fraction of what commercial kiosk hardware costs. Whether as a device to take away, as a rental, or as a setup workshop where a business learns to turn its own donated tablets into terminals: it's a service that sits one hundred percent on our mission. Every terminal is one tablet less in the waste stream and one more customer working on open, local, tracker-free hardware.
Why this matters to us
It's mission lived, not just sold. Every terminal rescues a concrete device from e-waste and avoids manufacturing a new one. That's the circular economy we exist for — not as a slogan, but as a workbench.
It's the most credible proof we can offer. A business that runs its own goods-in, its own time clock and its own warehouse on refurbished tablets and self-built, open-source software doesn't have to explain that reuse works. It shows it. «We're not selling you the idea — we run our own shop on it.»
It costs us almost nothing and opens a new line. Hardware from donations, software from in-house, refurbishment as an existing craft: the marginal effort for one more terminal is small, the benefit — revenue, customer proximity, visibility — is not.
And it's shareable knowledge. A documented, teachable path from old device to work tool fits our open ethos exactly. Other associations, shops and workshops should be able to rebuild it — that's not a trade secret, that's the point.
How to build one
The process is short and follows the first part:
- Choose a job. One, and only one — time clock, capture, catalogue, check-in.
- Place the device. Where there's power. Fixed terminals stay plugged in, so a weak battery is a non-issue.
- On networked use, install a free OS. LineageOS or /e/OS, so the device stays securely up to date without manufacturer lock-in.
- Lock it to the one application. Set up kiosk mode — screen pinning, a kiosk app or Guided Access. After that the tablet shows only this one interface.
- Put it on the guest or IoT Wi-Fi and switch off unused accounts and sensors.
Unsure about the reflash or the battery? Bring the device to the Repair Café. That's exactly what we're here for — and if you like, we'll set the terminal up while we're at it.
If you want to join in
Do you have old tablets lying around unused? Donate them — we turn them into work tools for someone who needs them. Do you run a shop, a restaurant or a workshop and want a terminal that doesn't cost the earth and doesn't burden it? Get in touch. And if you want to build it yourself, follow the process above and the first part — the whole path is openly documented.
Used computers get repaired and rehomed — not landfilled. Sometimes the best thing an old tablet can do is simply work.
Sources and further reading
- RevampIT — «The Second Life of a Tablet»: why tablets «die», free operating systems and kiosk mode in detail.
- RevampIT — CO₂ calculation & sources: our open, sourced model for the manufacturing footprint per device category (based on ADEME open data).
- UNITAR & ITU — Global E-waste Monitor 2024: 62 Mt e-waste, 22.3 % documented as recycled.