I know there was some project about this but haven’t heard of anything for a while. Ewaste is such a crime; all of my devices are used or older purchases that are past their “cool by” date. I have an iPad 2 and iPad mini that function perfectly but aren’t supported by apple anymore. Would love to get a second life for them instead of having to get rid of them for no good reason.
The project you’re thinking of is probably PostmarketOS, though it doesn’t look like anyone’s started work on an iPad 2 or mini yet.
They’re on Lemmy now, so that might be a good place to follow up (or if you’re curious to start hacking away at anything yourself)