AI Disclosure:
AI will be used to perform research and write any scripts I may need to get my project done. Though I often prefer doing things myself, AI usage is kind of the point of my project, so this will be a pretty AI heavy one. I’ll make sure to explicitly mention whatever is done with AI.
I have a bunch of old Android phones from my family in various states of disrepair, but some of them still contain some level of working hardware which I would like to find a purpose for. At the same time I’ve been meaning to set up a personal agent like Hermes to help me automate and manage my life, and especially to serve as my personal dedicated sysadmin for my current homelab.
So my idea is to combine these two things. I want to get rid of Android and install Linux on at least one of these phones for it to serve as my Hermes host. Ideally I would get NixOS installed on the phone, but if PostmarketOS is the only thing I manage to get running that is fine too.
I think having an android device that could be driven by an agent may also be useful for certain app automations, especially for apps that don’t have a web equivalent an agent could use.
I have already checked the PostmarketOS compatibility matrix, and none of the devices I have support it. I’m not opposed to buying a used/broken Android phone to install Linux on, but it would have to be cheap, and I would still like to repurpose some of the hardware I already have.
Goals:
- At least on one phone
- Get rid of Android
- Bootstrap PostmarketOS
- Install Hermes agent
- Configure Hermes to act as homelab sysadmin
- Stretch goal: Install NixOS instead of PostmarketOS
- On another phone
- Install a custom rom to get a more up-to-date Android version
- Figure out how to drive the phone and use apps with an agent (MCP server?)