For the past years people have been collecting disposable vapes primarily for their lithium-ion batteries, but as these disposable vapes have begun to incorporate more elaborate electronics, these too have become an interesting target for reusability. To prove the point of how capable these electronics have become, [BogdanTheGeek] decided to turn one of these vapes into a webserver, appropriately called the vapeserver.
While tearing apart some of the fancier adult pacifiers, [Bogdan] discovered that a number of them feature Puya MCUs, which is a name that some of our esteemed readers may recognize from ‘cheapest MCU’ articles. The target vape has a Puya PY32F002B MCU, which comes with a Cortex-M0+ core at 24 MHz, 3 kB SRAM and 24 kB of Flash. All of which now counts as ‘disposable’ in 2025, it would appear.
Even with a fairly perky MCU, running a webserver with these specs would seem to be a fool’s errand. Getting around the limited hardware involved using the uIP TCP/IP stack, and using SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol), along with semihosting to create a serial device that the OS can use like one would a modem and create a visible IP address with the webserver.
The URL to the vapeserver is contained in the article and on the GitHub project page, but out of respect for not melting it down with an unintended DDoS, it isn’t linked here. You are of course totally free to replicate the effort on a disposable adult pacifier of your choice, or other compatible MCU.
Hariharasubrahmanian Shrikumar designed an itty-bitty cheap web server in 1999: The World’s Smallest Web Server?
Kind of shows there’s not much to a basic web server.
Well, no, there isn’t, there’s plenty of examples on far less powerful 8 bit microcontrollers, some even using ISA Ethernet cards and implementing TCP/IP
Yes and much later in 2002 individual one-upped the fellow by getting one to run on a part originally made by Fairchild. Which is the ACE1101, I found it at https://web.archive.org/web/20020605032931/http://d116.com/ace/ sadly the original is down.
my buddy goes through three of these things a week. I know the original author doesn’t want to advertise a tobacco product by revealing the name of the manufacture, but if anyone knows or recognizes from the pic can you shoot me an email so I can get him to save the brand that can be used the letter k then saunders0324@gmail.com thank you!
I did leave a hint in the blog post, but you have to read carefully :)
lost mary? from mary jane i.e. blazingly fast / getting blazed?
I think i have heard that they PUYA
https://github.com/grahamwhaley/py32c642_vape
My guess is ‘the TARGET vape’ then
Vaporware.
hahahahahahahaha – I liked that one. :-)
Gives new meaning to “the magic smoke escaping” from the electronics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_smoke
Why does a vape need a microcontroller?
It doesn’t, but people will pay a higher price if it does.
Marketing proves the invisible hand of the market is not rational.
How, when people don’t even know it’s in there?
Very little of marketing actually does anything other than cost money. That’s just the marketing agencies selling bunk – after all, marketing only needs to work to the extent of the primary customer, which is the company that wants to advertise itself. Whether it actually influences consumer behavior is a secondary concern.
Vapers, on the mod scene, have had microcontrollers for at least a decade and even OLED displays to allow users to configure the devices for different coils, liquids, temperatures etc. etc.
The cheap, nearly disposable vapes use chips which are single digit pennies each and add a few blingy features like flashy lights, charge indication, some count up the number and duration of ‘hits’ to give percentage used so they’re not entirely useless (no, I don’t vape or smoke, I just collect street lithium and now microcontrollers when I see them).
And if it did need a uC, wouldn’t something in the 8051 class be sufficient?
This is how we’re going to get sentient toasters with an attitude problem.
Howdy doodly do! How’s it going?
Maybe a toaster that always burns the toast if it is handled roughly or detects the user is in a bad mood?
Yay, I did the port of Adam Dunkels’ uIP v0.9 to the 8051, and added the slip protocol dude uses too.
…and it’s just as relevant today:
https://green.bug-eyed.monster/uip-v0-9-keil-8051/
Recent disposable vaping devices have an LCD display to show remaining battery and e-liquid; some even have addressable LEDs and animation effects. For these features, you need an MCU.In more expensive models, you can even adjust the coil current.”
it was probably way easier and cheaper to write firmware to control the heater and leds than making a circuit.
THIS. I have extensively messed with these, having teen neighbors that throw them over the fence when they are done. Watching the evolution, it makes a lot of sense to do it like that and have the uC handle the power, heating element, display, and extra leds thrown in. The main hobble with these is the limited storage. I lucked out and found one with a cloned broadcomm chip which let me hit the display frame and unravel a lot from there. I totally fried a few too apparently being attiny kinda clones with fuses but whatever it is just me playing with garbage lol. There was another that i found had a curl listing for whatever reason but when I scanned the url it was a dumpload for an iot bulb lol. I think they just use whatever they get their hands on for cheap. It is fascinating from a tinkering standpoint but also frustrating dealing with clones of clones and some chips they found in a bin next to a Mogwai cage lol. I will say AI is an absolute beast at figuring out possible base chip and what they will respond to, saving hours of whitepage multitabbed madness lol.
Could you expand a bit how you use AI to find the chip?
Apparently not. Hackaday keeps removing my replies. Sorry but I guess you will just have to figure it out on your own. The limited ram really makes it difficult to do much of anything outside of a MUD with 2 users. Good luck!
Run the above through AI and ask “Talking about chips found in vapes. So how would AI do what’s described?” The rest is some suggestions.
You basically play 20 questions with the AI. Given some piece of evidence, it can narrow down the list of possibilities and suggest some course of action. If that works, then the list gets shorter.
For example, I just pretended that my calculator was damaged, half the display doesn’t work, and the model number was scuffed off, and ran through a number of input options to determine that it’s an fx-82ES.
I’ll see if this one stays. You act like you want to build one with AI. Then ask it about some current models to compare to. Then you throw the rope over the wall and have it scan asian forums for other known parts on the board. It is surprisingly good sometimes at finding things on chip broker sites etc and seems to gear its probablility marks around that. For figuring out the clones thing, there are 5 big “Mordor” style factories that shit all of these things out. You find the proper chip and then ask AI for cheaper alternatives. You can even ask it to find a clone with more onboard ram etc but but but it is by its nature a cheap clone and its specs are not probably true or reliable which was something AI ironically warned me of lol. Start with Jason’s blog on his adventures to get an overview. Oh and it takes a fair amount of luck with AI on the prompts as probably anyone can attest to. Sometimes it nails a prompt first try and other times it drowns itself in a sea of possibilities…
To run the display. Why a vape needs a display is another question, and of course the main question is why vape?
The fancier ones let you set custom parameters & profiles for whatever reason, so you need a uC for that.
One of the best things that we can do as consumers is ban disposable vapes.
GenZ / GenAlpha have no right to complain
On what grounds?
I dislike the government targeting of tobacco/vape/nicotine companies. Yes they are bad, yes they can cause issues. So can drinking, you don’t see progressively higher taxes on those.
And the absurd “Think of the children,” as they ban flavors in tobacco/vape/nicotine! Meanwhile if you want Rootbeer, Vanilla, Whipped Cream, or any of hundreds of flavors of Vodka its just a trip to the liqueur store.
Disposable vapes are just unnecessary waste. They could still use vapes with replaceable cartridges.
No progressive taxes on alcohol? Well that is a thing in EU!
We have plans to increase alcohol tax every couple of years. Of course this is country dependent.
It’s a curious thing, seeing how easy it is to make alcohol, that people still keep paying those taxes. If you’re paying ten euros a pint, like in some Nordic country, you’d think that people would skip the pub and just drink their own booze.
Maybe they do?
Not because smoking is unhealthy or whatver, I don’t care.
But throwing away at least a lipo cell which was charged ONE TIME ist utter bullshit. Lots of countries have laws against unnecessary e-waste. I really wonder how these thing could even start to sell here in germany…
They have one good aspect, though (aside free street lihium from these douche flutes): They are good to shut down idiots ranting about evil EVs that have their lithium mined by poor children somwhere in the jungle. Ranting while sucking on their disposable smoking pacifier…
The cells in those things are often as good as disposable, because they’re made extremely cheaply. I wouldn’t trust them to charge safely – for instance, who says they even bothered mixing the right additives to prevent dendrite formation?
Disposable vapes (single use) are banned in the UK. Now reusable vapes have become so cheap they are essentially disposable
But does it run Doom?
Either “yes it does” or someone is gonna say “hold my beer” real soon now.
it kind of runs Doom on society…
WTF are these?
I have been collecting and salvaging disposable vapes for a decade.
I even went around to the local bars and convinced them to set up a highly visible box for patrons to drop their used vapes in. (It helped that there has been at least 1 parking lot fire here caused by a discarded vape being run over)
I have never seen one with a pcb in it.
They are usually just a battery, a bit of Nichrome wire, and either a reed switch or a microphone+switch.
The “microphone+switch” you mention has an ASIC inside. They do look like a small mic, but it’s a pressure sensor :)
There’s 3 types. The basic ones you’ve been finding (those have the biggest cells), USB-C rechargeable (but not refillable) ones where the small battery gets charged a few times before getting tossed, and ones like here that have some sort of display to show charge level or whatever, and these are often refillable via “juice pods’.
Like everything else the high end models (some which take dual 18600’s!) have lots of useless bells & whistles & configuration setting, hence the controller. The pods have magnets and pogo pins, for God’s sake.
I found a bunch of chunky cylindrical rechargeable ones, so I put in bigger batteries (where the juice pod goes) and 3D printed some shapes to make night lights. One model I find a lot of can take 2 x 18450 cells so I make power banks out of them.
As DJ Boi mentioned, you need to trigger the air sensor to make any circuitry work, but they usually shut off after a few seconds. You can add a button to check charge state etc but usually you’ll only be using it as a charge module.
Terrible useless wasteful crap, but hey, free batteries!
the year is 2035 and each one has its own ai chatbot and internet connection…
im gen z and have no intention of touching those things.
missed opportunity for tcp/ip over vapor signals (receiving part to be worked out) ;)
It could read news and release white smoke whenever new pope is chosen.
I just used a cheep one to make a laser in an old phone receiver 📞.
Not mentioning the brand feels more like hoarding the free supply of boards and less like protecting us from advertising the manufacturer.
I can’t stop thinking, “Someone with poor impulse control had this in their MOUTH!”
Not touching that.
Mouth would be the cleaner place
Assume it will return a 420 http status?
Recently got a lost mary spinoff that has a full LCD capable of playing doom. Going to take that apart now lol