How Many Puffs Does It Take To Kill An E-Cigarette?

January 10, 2015 by Rick Osgood 20 Comments

Most of us have probably heard the old Tootsie Pop slogan, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” [E-Smoker2014] had a similar question about his e-cigarettes. These devices are sometimes advertised with the number of puffs they are good for. [E-Smoker2014] had purchased an e-cigarette on a trip to Belgium that advertised 500 puffs. After a bit of use, he started to suspect that he wasn’t getting the advertised number of puffs in before the battery would die. Rather than just accept that the world may never know for sure, he decided to test it out himself.

There aren’t many details on this build, but you can tell what’s going on from the video below. [E-Smoke2014r] built a machine to artificially puff on an e-cigarette. The e-cigarette is hooked up to what appears to be vinyl tubing. This tubing then attaches to a T-splitter. One end of the splitter is hooked up to a DIY actuator valve that can open or close the port. The other end of the splitter is hooked up to more tubing, which in turn is attached to a plastic cylinder placed in a container of water.

To simulate breathing, the computer first opens the relief valve in the splitter. It then mechanically lowers the plastic container into the bowl of water, pushing out a bunch of air in the process. The valve closes, and the computer then raises the plastic container out of the water. This action creates suction that draws air in through the e-cigarette like a normal user would do with their lungs. The computer increases the puff count and then repeats the process, expelling any vapor out of the relief valve.

The results of the test indicated that [E-Smoker] could only get 59 puffs out of this particular e-cigarette before draining the battery. Not even close to the advertised 500 puffs. Maybe he should consider building his own e-cigarette vaporizer? Continue reading “How Many Puffs Does It Take To Kill An E-Cigarette?” →

E-cigarettes, Powered By An NES Controller

September 10, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 59 Comments

Electronic cigarettes are all the rage these days, and as with any new electronic bauble, someone is eventually going to stuff it in some old NES hardware. The NES controller e-cig has been done before, but [mastblast09]’s controller mod is one of the best ones around.

A bit of background before we dig into this: e-cigarettes are just any other *cough cough cough* vaporizer you might find, but instead of turning a solid into a vapor, these guys turn a nicotine-infused liquid into a vapor. As e-cigarettes are a bit more legal than some other magic boxes, there is, of course, an amazing amount of options out there for those that partake.

[Mastblast09] is using an off-the-shelf e-cig controller and charger board carefully placed them in a hollowed out NES controller. With the help of a few tact switches he made the B button on the controller light up the coil and the up and down switches change the wattage.

The real treat in this build is the addition of a very small LED voltmeter. With this, [mastblast09] can check out the voltage of his NES e-cigarette under load, a big help if you’re trying to perfect the perfect vape while the battery is under load.

Web-enabling Your Smoke Breaks

February 28, 2011 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

If you’re going to freeze your butt off smoking in the middle of winter you might was well have company while you’re out there. [Zach’s] company wanted to crunch some data about smoking breaks and worker productivity. Instead of just meeting the bland data collection needs he decided to add functionality.

He took time to explain the different parts of the system. Above you can see the web interface that lets you know which of your coworkers are smoking right now. It also lets you click to check in and out from your breaks. After this was up and running he found that often the smokers forgot to ‘clock out’ before a break. As a backup system he build a physical interface on the way out of the office. Each smoker has their own button with a corresponding LED. If the light’s on you’re having a break and when it’s off you’re working. This controller is Arduino based and uses a Perl script to monitor the input and sync both that physical display and the web interface. [Zach] posted a few pictures if you want to take a look at the rest of the system.