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There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

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Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#301
post #170
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on that? Edit: I'm actually curious l, i don't know how recycling supposed to work for electronics and how it can be a scam.

This youtube video explains why plastic recycling exists, how it's mostly ineffective and why is it a scam created to normalize one-use plastic. This basically applies to electronics and others. "Why would I reuse or reduce, I can buy, consume an recycle". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g

wildly country dependent, e.g. check the stats for the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

paper straws do not make any sense any way you look at it. Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ? Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.

Isn't this a bit like "paper" cups for coffee / water? We switched to these at work a few years ago, and it's an all-round horrible experience. I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day. I also don't know how "eco-friendly" they actually are, since there's a picture of a dead turtle on them under…

> I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day

Yeah, if you're using that many, the solution is, and always has been, to get a proper reusable cup (ceramic, glass, whatever).

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#303

Is this actually disposable if it has the rechargeable battery and display? Or is it maybe like a lighter that technically can be refilled but nobody ever does? It's so curious why these things are addictive. Before I tried a vape (it was called an e-cigarette back then) I thought the addictive thing about cigarettes is the nicotine. That's part of it, but a huge part (possibly even bigger) is just the sensation of s…

It's both disposable and rechargeable. It has to be rechargeable as the battery doesn't contain enough capacity for the total amount of juice that's stored in them. E.g. a vape could have 10k puffs of juice, but the battery only lasts for ~2k of puffs so you have to recharge it about 5 times until the juice runs out. But once it runs out, there's no way to refill the juice so they get discarded. I remember when these USB-C vapes originally came out, we were joking that vapes got USB-C before the iPhone did.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#304
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a bit like "paper" cups for coffee / water? We switched to these at work a few years ago, and it's an all-round horrible experience. I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day. I also don't know how "eco-friendly" they actually are, since there's a picture of a dead turtle on them under…

> I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day Yeah, if you're using that many, the solution is, and always has been, to get a proper reusable cup (ceramic, glass, whatever).

Right, but this just shows why these policies don't work in practice. People will just use 10 paper cups which are free, rather than cart around a big ceramic one.

Especially in situations where people don't even have an assigned spot in the office anymore, it's not exactly shocking that many will choose the easier route.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#305

This is a really interesting topic but not a thorough article imo. I don't really understand how the 6 flavours come about, what the sucking positions the author mentions are etc. Would love it if you go into more detail. Also, now I have a very strong urge to buy one of these things and take it apart. Inspirational!

There's a rotating mouthpiece apparently https://vaping360.com/vape-products/fizzy-max-iii-6in1/ I also found it interesting that the mouthpiece position would be detected with microphones rather than any other electronic sensors.

That's such an interesting design choice. Very curious why they went with the mic approach. maybe because it was already there to sense sucking anyway.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#306
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why when folks nowadays say "you cannot use XYZ for embedded", given what most embedded systems look like, and what many of us used to code on 8 and 16 bit home computers, I can only assert they have no idea how powerful modern embedded systems have become. Now that it is a pity that when people talk about saving the planet everyone keeps rushing to dispoable electronics, what serves me to go by bycicle to w…

> Which is why when folks nowadays say "you cannot use XYZ for embedded", given what most embedded systems look like, and what many of us used to code on 8 and 16 bit home computers, I can only assert they have no idea how powerful modern embedded systems have become. Yet, I still need to wait about 1 second (!) after each key press when buying a parking ticket and the machine wants me to enter my license plate numbe…

Give it some slack, it's probably doing its best to inexplicably run windows.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#307
post #72

For these devices the microcontroller needs to be super cheap. Microcontrollers like the Puya PY32 Series (e.g., PY32C642, PY32F002/F030) can cost in the $0.02 - $0.05 range for the kind of many-million volumes applicable for disposable vapes. These are 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 MCUs, running at a 24 MHz clock or similar, some with 24 KB of ROM and maybe 3 KB of RAM! To put into context: this is 3x the ROM/RAM of the ZX81…

> These are 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 MCUs, running at a 24 MHz clock or similar, some with 24 KB of ROM and maybe 3 KB of RAM!

So, probably enough to land on the moon. And cheap enough to justify a dozen backups.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How close are we to smart dust I wonder? How small can we make wireless communications? There's two limiting factors for 'smart dust': power (batteries are the majority weight and volume of this vape), and antennae (minimum size determined by wavelength of carrier wave). I believe you can fit an NFC module in a 5x5mm package, but that does externalize the power supply.

RFID tags are powered wirelessly, one could imagine powering smaller particles when operating on higher frequencies (RFID is on 13.something MHz requiring relatively large coils). A directional antenna could send a pulsed beam to power a subset of the particles in the area and afterwards receive their signals.

It needs to be in the infrared spectrum at least to be useful for smart dust, otherwise the package size is still dominated by the size of the antenna. Even mm-wave radar is marginal here.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#309
post #29

I've just started a Salvage Pile in my workshop. Laser printer with fax modem was the first for excision and harvest. I could feel the addiction take hold before the last of the plastic shell was tossed into the refuse bin. The stepper motors alone! I have a huge old microwave on the blocks next. After that a series of small odd ball electronic toys and a few early LED bulbs. If I ever come across a vape, I'm sure it…

Go too far and you might be labeled a hoarder.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#310
post #299
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone was locked out in a building am staying at (40 something stories) for several hours. When I asked the concierge if I can have a look at the system, it turns out they had none. The whole thing communicated with AWS for some subscription SaaS that provided them with a front-end to register/block cards. And every tap anywhere (elevators/doors/locks) in the building communicated back with this system hosted on A…

> Absolute nightmare. Yes, but still probably a million times easier for both the building management and the software vendor to have a SaaS for that, than having to buy hardware to put somewhere in the building (with redundant power, cooling, etc.), and have someone deploy, install, manage, update, etc. all of that.

> with redundant power, cooling, etc

The doors the system controls don't have any of this. Hell, the whole building doesn't have any of this. And it definitely doesn't have redundant internet connections to the cloud-based control plane.

This is fear-mongering when a passive PC running a container image on boot will suffice plenty. For updates a script that runs on boot and at regular intervals that pulls down the latest image with a 30s timeout if it can't reach the server.

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