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Hosting a website on a disposable vape

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Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#431

Post by lukan »

Telemakhos wrote: post #390
SXX wrote: post #136

Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive HW: 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM, actual 4G modem sometimes with 2 sim switching support. Since it's actually old Android SOC there is even GPU and GPS in there. And a lot of work was already done on supporting them: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_d…

> 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM And, that Snapdragon is 1.4 GHz, I think. That's enough for a bare-bones WordPress installation. My first laptop had a 100 MB had drive, 8 MB of RAM, and a 25 MHz processor, and I remember running a web server on it too, in addition to Windows 3.11 and word processors and other software. One of those dongles would have been godlike power back in those days. I feel like somewhere along the way sc…

Hm, thanks for the idea, but I rather want a minimal node environment on that usb dongle server now.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#432

Post by briansm »

justincormack wrote: post #96
jerf wrote: post #87

The mismatch between the Ancient Specs of Yore is kind of interesting. The Commodore 64 had 64KB of RAM, but that RAM was attached to an 8-bit, 1MHz CPU. This thing has call it half the RAM of a Commodore 64, but it's attached to a 32-bit 24MHz CPU the 1980s could only dream of. And it's disposable in 2025. Pretty impressive in a weird way.

Its only got 3k of RAM, 24k of flash. Although modern flash is sometimes the same bandwidth as memory was if you go back a bit, although not latency of course.

The old 1980s computers also had no equivalent of flash storage though, the RAM had to store the program being run as well as act as scratch-space.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#434

Post by dspillett »

Tepix wrote: post #421
sitzkrieg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's almost like everything matching the pi footprint is severely overpriced!

The original Raspberry Pi Zero was a good deal at $5 or even at $10. Too bad it was always poorly available and mostly bundled with overpriced dongles, power supplies, SD cards etc.

The poor avaialbility was largely due to the great pricing: small commercial users scooped them up in the largest quanitites that they could because they were so competative against other options both in terms of pricce and having the advantage of decent support¹ unlike other inexpensive SoCs. Max-per-customer limits imposed by some distributors were not hard to get around. That meant it was difficult for the individual tinkerers that they were aimed at to get hold of them. And once an availability gap was spotted in the market the scalpers crowded in, so even those commercial users had trouble getting them at RRP.

If the current models were any cheaper, that might happen again. It is one of those places where the infamous “what the market will bare” works against us: unless you are buying in bulk you have the choice between paying more or having no availability at all.

People are willing to pay more the rPi units because of the support¹ and reliability². I know I am, last time I wanted a small unit like that I went straight for an rPi without even looking at the other options that might have been cheaper.

--------

[1] official + community

[2] While not perfect in that regard, no supplier is, and the Pis do seem to do better than others in that regard, especially when compared to anything noticable less expensive.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#435

Post by johnisgood »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #228
palata wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the exact opposite. Tobacco is so heavily regulated and taxed that these become profitable. It's not the opposite at all. Tobacco should disappear just as well.

Juul was very popular and less wasteful (although not perfect of course) as you disposed of the liquid pod rather than the whole device, they were regulated out of existence though. The regulations had loophole/oversight which paved the way for the disposable vape era.

And we have people in the comment section saying we need more regulations.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#436

Post by MangoToupe »

privatelypublic wrote: post #30
orev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are reusable, which many people take advantage of. And it has dramatically reduced the number of tumbleweed bags clogging up nature.

Reasonable people already reused single-use bags. Trashcan liners, dog walk bags, cat scoop bags, etc. Having recently been reminded that it used to be common to see eviscerated VHS tapes by roads, I've been reminded that we'll always have people who litter.

Many single use bags come with holes in them or develop them after a single trip hauling boxes with sharp corners home. Making the plastic a little thicker makes it last many times longer.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#437

Post by alias_neo »

happyhardcore wrote: post #162
SXX wrote: post #136

Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive HW: 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM, actual 4G modem sometimes with 2 sim switching support. Since it's actually old Android SOC there is even GPU and GPS in there. And a lot of work was already done on supporting them: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_d…

I've found [1] to be the best guide for getting started with them; you need to make a copy of the firmware partitions that you re-flash after installing Linux onto it in order to get the 4G modem working. It's honestly absurd how much you're getting for a fiver with it; add a power bank (or make your own from scavenged vape batteries in the spirit of this post) and you have a full Linux machine with WiFi and 4G that…

> or make your own from scavenged vape batteries in the spirit of this post

On this note, anyone got a tut or links to where I can get an appropriate charge controller/BMS (UK) to do this?

Like the post's author, I've been collecting vape batteries for a while and would love to build a power bank or use them in some IoT projects.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#438

Post by oblio »

Telemakhos wrote: post #390
SXX wrote: post #136

Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive HW: 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM, actual 4G modem sometimes with 2 sim switching support. Since it's actually old Android SOC there is even GPU and GPS in there. And a lot of work was already done on supporting them: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_d…

> 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM And, that Snapdragon is 1.4 GHz, I think. That's enough for a bare-bones WordPress installation. My first laptop had a 100 MB had drive, 8 MB of RAM, and a 25 MHz processor, and I remember running a web server on it too, in addition to Windows 3.11 and word processors and other software. One of those dongles would have been godlike power back in those days. I feel like somewhere along the way sc…

Let's not overhype those days. I had a P1 166MHz and playing an MP3 meant everything else would have to be closed, if I'd open Word the song would stutter. Not all modern processing power is wasted.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#439

Post by skeezyjefferson »

dspillett wrote: post #434
Tepix wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Raspberry Pi Zero was a good deal at $5 or even at $10. Too bad it was always poorly available and mostly bundled with overpriced dongles, power supplies, SD cards etc.

The poor avaialbility was largely due to the great pricing: small commercial users scooped them up in the largest quanitites that they could because they were so competative against other options both in terms of pricce and having the advantage of decent support¹ unlike other inexpensive SoCs. Max-per-customer limits imposed by some distributors were not hard to get around. That meant it was difficult for the individ…

> The poor avaialbility was largely due to the great pricing:

the poor availability was because they didnt make enough. they blame supply chain issues around covid. in the time they were complaining that it wasnt their fault, competitors like the esp32 started appearing and taking market share. i was totally put off the rpi because of that saga. its no longer a good deal, there are better options in either direction (more microcontrollery or more power)

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#440

Post by skeezyjefferson »

Telemakhos wrote: post #390
SXX wrote: post #136

Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive HW: 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM, actual 4G modem sometimes with 2 sim switching support. Since it's actually old Android SOC there is even GPU and GPS in there. And a lot of work was already done on supporting them: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_d…

> 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM And, that Snapdragon is 1.4 GHz, I think. That's enough for a bare-bones WordPress installation. My first laptop had a 100 MB had drive, 8 MB of RAM, and a 25 MHz processor, and I remember running a web server on it too, in addition to Windows 3.11 and word processors and other software. One of those dongles would have been godlike power back in those days. I feel like somewhere along the way sc…

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