A few days ago, my brother gave me his old broken nexus 7. It's still in perfect working condition, except that the touch screen doesn't work at all.
Does anyone have any ideas on what I could use it for? Thus far I'm thinking of using it as a mini 3rd display, to put my hardware monitor on (then I can play civ5, watch QI and still be able to monitor my stuff). But this is a mostly functional Tablet, with processor, storage and all. (I'm also going to check whether this will function as a better wireless card than my PCI one) This is something I like to toy with every so often, i.e. using broken or old hardware for some other purpose.
Why not replace the touch screen instead, and get the tablet up and running again?
If all the hardware is in good condition, it should not be that hard to replace the touch screen.
Try to disassemble it, perhaps the cable that controls the touch screen has come loose?
One of my colleagues replaced the screen of an ipad2 that was broken, he could not get the touch to work, but after we pulled it apart again, the ribbon cable for the touch was not properly seated.
You could use it as a web-server. I-Jetty is one you could look at.
Before you take it apart check out using a mouse and keyboard on it. Check out a USB-OTG Cable to plug in almost anything you want into the device.
You could get hdmi out with this and use it as a media streaming device. Along with a usb otg cable that you could connect a remote to. A quick amazon search revealed this.