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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

#391

Post by cons0le »

loeg wrote: post #98
jhanschoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If true I wonder if that has to do with this incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...

It isn't. That was illegal marijuana vapes. The FDA just hates flavored nicotine products because they're appealing (to both adults and children), and the FDA doesn't want nicotine products to be appealing (because nicotine is perceived to be a public health problem on the scale of tobacco).

Weed disposables are a whole rabbit hole by themselves.

You want to buy a disposable? Ok, here, $20 and you're done.

But if you want to make the oil at home? Ok, $2000 for lights, timers, nutrients, seeds, and a grow tent. Plus another ~$10,000 for a basic short path distillation setup. And honestly to make anything close to what you get in the disposables, you'll need to hire an expert with experience. And you need a lot of space for your new secret lab. For 99.999% of people, it's super not worth it to make at home.

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

#392

Post by ivm »

kleene_op wrote: post #317

Our whole current civilization could be construed as advanced alien tech servicing a humongous tribe of moronic apes. The fact that one fifth of the internet is dedicated to porn just speaks for itself. Just thinking about all the tech involved, from the capturing of footage using highly sophisticated camera, to the transmission over kilometers of fiber optics, to the stokage into redundant and consistent databases b…

In the past, entire intercontinental trade routes existed just to get food seasoned, so what you’re pointing out isn’t that unusual. The desire for sensual pleasures drives most things (and not only in humans).

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

#393

Post by lazide »

Nextgrid wrote: post #365
lazide wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those devices can be trivially power cycled, and won’t have as many issues with dodgy power. Some PC somewhere with storage is a bigger problem.

> Some PC somewhere with storage is a bigger problem Both an embedded microcontroller and a PC have storage. The reason you can power-cycle a microcontroller at will is because that storage is read-only and only a specific portion dedicated to state is writable (and the device can be reset if that ever gets corrupted). Use a buildroot/yocto image on the PC with read-only partitions and a separate state partition that…

PCs are orders of magnitude more complex, with a lot more to break. Sounds like a whole lot of work for… what?

Assuming the internet connection and AWS work of course. Which they won’t always, then oops.

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

#394

Post by dvdkon »

torginus wrote: post #246
SuperMouse wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've bought hundreds of Puya's for my lab stock on LCSC. Neat little things!

How usable are they for hacking? I've had bad experiences with more obscure chips requiring custom programmers/debuggers.

They're great, because you can use all standard ARM tooling, including CMSIS-DAP dongles for debugging.

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

#395

Post by woadwarrior01 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #160
teiferer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why stop there" is often a reason why nothing gets done. Why do small if you can go big right away? Because going big right away is costly (in social cost, in convincing, in how much people need to change behavior, ...) and that prevents people from doing it in the first place because the threshold is high. Apathy is the result. Better to take a small step first, then get used to the measure / the cost, then have a…

> Everybody makes fun of paper straws. Yeah, because they suck . Uh, pun not intended. Paper straws get somewhat soggy and feel bad in your mouth. They are inferior to the plastic straws they purport to replace, so people resist them as much as they can. If you want to actually make a difference with an environmental effort, you need to make something superior . Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front c…

> Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front cost aside) they are wildly superior to incandescent.

There's burgeoning movement called "PWM sensitive"[1] that's opposed to (cheap) LED lights.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/

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

#396

Post by whywhywhywhy »

ajb wrote: post #227
nottorp wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking disposable vapes, but this will apply to quality of life appliances like washing machines as well, right? Do you want to live in a world where only the rich can afford washing machines? Incidentally, I don't know what you do, but once in a while I throw (carefully, li-ion batteries) my broken electronics in the trunk and bring them to the local collection center.

The EU and UK already require sellers to recycle electronics, and we can still afford washing machines. Here is Amazon's page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeI...

Thinking for a moment what "recycling" a washing machine would look like and it's very obvious it would just mean paying a 3rd party to dump it in the 3rd world somewhere to be stripped if at all. Hard to imagine it's not causing more environmental damage by having this policy.

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

#397

Post by Nextgrid »

lazide wrote: post #393
Nextgrid wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some PC somewhere with storage is a bigger problem Both an embedded microcontroller and a PC have storage. The reason you can power-cycle a microcontroller at will is because that storage is read-only and only a specific portion dedicated to state is writable (and the device can be reset if that ever gets corrupted). Use a buildroot/yocto image on the PC with read-only partitions and a separate state partition that…

PCs are orders of magnitude more complex, with a lot more to break. Sounds like a whole lot of work for… what? Assuming the internet connection and AWS work of course. Which they won’t always, then oops.

If you're relying on AWS you either way have a "PC" to relay communication between AWS and the keycard readers & door latches.

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

#398

Post by rwmj »

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…

The Z80 didn't even do 8 bit add. The ALU operates in two 4 bit cycles.

I am now wondering if it's possible to put a ZX81 emulator on one of these microcontrollers. It would need to emulate the Z80 but you've got plenty of spare cycles, and 3x the ROM and RAM of the original, so enough space for a small emulator!

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

#399

Post by bborud »

This shouldn't be surprising since a vape is a safety critical device. Primarily because the temperature control has to be precise and you have to solve a surprisingly large number of control problems that can arise in real life. For instance, if you overshoot the temperature the amount of toxic by-products can increase sharply. You can also cause parts of the vape to disintegrate, and then aspirate things you really do not want in your lungs.

And this is before we get into dealing with the battery -- which has its own set of risks.

(One of the early sources of funding for MyNewt development was a company that made vapes. Though not disposable ones if I remember correctly).

Also, the MCUs they use are very cheap. They are cheaper than having lots of specialized discrete electronics.

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

#400

Post by squigz »

lachiflippi wrote: post #344
GCUMstlyHarmls wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man. I don't actually know anyone who vapes. I see it in public sometimes and just assumed people refilled them - maybe they do. Seeing him hold some up, seeing all that plastic, metal, electronics, all that Work (Joules) expended, in something that you just dump after a day is nuts . I can't think of anything else like that. Maybe plastic water bottles but they don't have even half the materials or complexity? Maybe…

Refillable vapes used to be the standard around a decade ago, back when a liter of vape base (without nicotine) cost 30€ at max. Disposable vapes pretty much didn't exist. Now the same liter of vape base (still without nicotine) is a "tobacco product" and costs 400€+ due to taxes thanks to decade-long lobbying efforts by big tobacco, turning refillable vapes into a massive niche product due to single-use vapes costin…

Are you referring to VG/PG? Are they really that expensive for you? That's wild.
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