Solar-Powered iPhone 8 OCR Server: 80k+ Requests in One Year

A tech enthusiast transformed an old iPhone 8 into a 24/7 OCR server powered entirely by solar energy. The system consists of an iPhone 8 running a SwiftUI app with Apple's Vision OCR framework, an EcoFlow River 2 Pro power station, a mini PC handling web services and API routing, and a Tailscale network. Over a year, it processed over 83,000 OCR requests and 48GB of image data, saving $7-10/month on electricity. While not financially optimal, the project demonstrates sustainable computing and the potential of local AI processing, highlighting energy efficiency, privacy, and the advantages of local computing.