Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.jgc.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 673 posts

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

#451

Post by jijijijij »

GeertB wrote: 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…

> What an amazing time we live in!

I feel like, pioneers of the past would be rather disappointed with us.

I mean, primarily we're not using this ridiculous power to solve actual problems, but to enslave one another in addiction, mindless consumption and manufactured consent to a lesser life.

Almost 100 years later, now with computer enabled misinformation and agitation campaigns by tech oligarchs, a new fascism is on the rise and Alan Turing would be called an abomination, again.

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

#452

Post by stephen_g »

blitzar wrote: post #351
exikyut wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what happened to the building when us-east-1 went down.

I wonder what happened to the building when the internet went down. How do you get into the room to reboot the router?

There’s usually a back door with a physical key. The problem can be getting ahold of one of the people with that key though!

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

#453

Post by brk »

Alternate take: Is this really "a ridiculous amount of tech", or just "how things are today"?

At one point in history aluminum and other alloys were considered pretty cutting edge. As was in-house electricity and plumbing. Now, those things are just everyday stuff that gets no special regard.

When you can build disposable computers at scale for pennies, it might not be "tech" anymore in the sense of cutting edge things, and instead it's just "an average Tuesday".

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

#454

Post by joezydeco »

torginus wrote: post #233
GeertB wrote: 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…

It also stood out to me how little stuff is in there - there's the uC itself, 3 transistors for heating the flavor canisters, an op-amp for the microphones, but other than that I don't really see anything - no external oscillator, no vrm (though a charger/BMS circuit must be in there somewhere).

The vape is disposable, no need for a charging circuit and maybe a simple ADC to determine battery life based on a discharge curve.

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

#455

Post by walthamstow »

doublerabbit wrote: post #387
dbbk wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK also banned them

It was one of those rush laws. They are still for sale, I walk past a "BULK OUTLET FOR ELF-BAR" shop sign when I walk to work. It's one of those UK laws of "we are doing something!" but not actually do anything. These companies either pay backhand or know how to skirt around the rule. Who's enforcing it?

We're doing about as well at policing the vape ban as we are the ban on cocaine (which, in case you hadn't noticed, is everywhere)

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

#456

Post by scrumper »

lallysingh wrote: post #357
pkolaczk wrote: post #217

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. 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…

My first guess was debouncing. They assume that the switches are worn out, deeply weathered, and cheaply made. Each press will cause the signal to oscillate and they're taking their sweet time to register it. When the device is new this is an absurd amount of time to wait. As the device degrades over 10, 20 years, that programming will keep it working the same. Awful the entire time, yes, but the same as the day it w…

I was late for a train at my local station and the parking machine was taking ages to respond to keypresses. I could see the training pulling up to the platform and I was still stuck entering the second digit of seven. In my shameful frustration I hit the machine fairly hard. While the button presses might take a while to register, the anti-tamper alarm has really low latency and is also quite loud.

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

#457

Post by s1mplicissimus »

graemep wrote: post #349
jwr wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's programmer incompetence. Unfortunately pervasive, especially with devices like parking meters, EV chargers, and similar, where the feedback loop (angry customer) is long (angry customers resulting in revenue decrease) or non-existent.

They also prefer you to use the mobile app so they can gather more data so they do not want the devices to work well in the first place.

It's a nice theory, but many of those terrible parking ticket machines predate smartphones, so it might be the case for machines built now, but it's really hard to imagine that that was the original intention

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

#458

Post by rm30 »

pjmlp wrote: post #213
smashed wrote: post #3

Many countries have deposits for single use bottles/cans but an electronic device with a lipo battery is seen as perfectly fine to throw away. These things should have 100 times the deposit amount of a can of soda with mandatory requirements for retailers to take the 'empties' back.

Most countries don't do enough at all. For example Germany, while the country is famous for the whole splitting the garbage, I am still waiting after 20 years to see the kitchen oil recycling recipients as we have in Portugal. As for electronics, I would say no one has anything in place, and human nature is as such that hardly anyone will drive to the next recycling center to deliver a single device that broke down,…

Maybe Italy is more advanced, you can bring eWaste to the municipal center or to leave to the shop where you are buying a new device. On the street they started to place bin for small eWaste like phones, chargers, keyboards, vape.

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

#459

Post by sofixa »

quickthrowman wrote: post #407
sofixa wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Cooling for a card access system? A card access system requires zero cooling, it’s a DC power supply or AC transformer and a microcontroller that fits in a small unvented metal enclosure. It requires no management other than activating and deactivating badges. There is no reason to have any of the lock and unlock functionality tied to the cloud, it’s just shitty engineering by a company who wants to extract rent from…

The server running that system needs cooling, yes. You can't just shove it in a closet with zero thought and expect it to not overheat/shut down/catch fire, unless you live in the Arctic.

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

#460

Post by Fargren »

sejje wrote: post #435
Fargren wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be properly recycling electronics, if not extracting the metals? should the worthless based board to be melted and used for bottles?

Isn't that the point of recycling? To reuse the reusable materials like plastic?

If salvaging 100% of the materials that make up something is the only way to "properly" recycle, we are not recycling anything properly. Some components are not recyclable.

I won't speculate about whether the plastic on the board is recyclable, or ecological to recycle. I don't know. This is what I'm asking.

Post reply on HN