People have been recycling batteries in disposable vapes for a while, but BogdanTheGeek has gone a lot of further, converting a specific model of disposable vape into a web server.
How is that possible? Vapes have apparently become a bit more sophisticated in recent times, and some integrate an Arm Cortex microcontroller with a USB-C port that can be used to bring a network interface and run a web server.
The specific disposable vape (exact model not provided, but Grok thinks it may be from Bang King. Update: Wrong!) used by BogdanTheGeek features one of the ultra-cheap Puya PY32 microcontrollers, namely a 24 MHz PY32F002B Cortex-M0+ MCU with 3 kB SRAM and 24 kB flash.
The web server hack here involves using the SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) through a /dev/tty device to bring up a network interface, along with uIP lightweight TCP/IP stack. The first implementation was really slow with 1.5s pings, plenty of packet losses, and a web page loading in about 20 seconds. That’s because uIP is designed for resource-constrained microcontrollers and sends data byte-by-byte by default. Since the PY32F0002B MCU has 3KB SRAM, there was some room to implement a ring buffer, which dramatically improved performance. That means 20ms pings, no packet loss, and a 160ms full page load of a minimal web page.
You’ll find the source code of the semihost-ip implementation on GitHub, and the actual server can be found on ewaste.fka.wtf, which is currently inaccessible due to many people accessing it, but a copy can be found on the Wayback Machine. Vaporware has gotten real!
Via Hackaday
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I love this. If at least people could start to realize that they’re throwing away fully functional computers!
Bogden’s a good hacker and a nice guy as well. Definately check out his github. He’s been doing a lot of good ch32fun work recently.
Don’t tell the Russians
Small correction, the 20s and 160ms were for very simple html pages. The full article version took 1s for the html and ~2s for the image. Also Grok is wrong, as always.
Its wrong, but I am not seeing what brand/model of vape it is actually? Though maybe just get people to donate me their old vapes and go down the same rabbit hole?
Next to put together a cluster of these?
Looks like ewaste.fka.wtf is hosted on one of those repurposed vapes…
Yes, exactly.
That was the ‘joke’.
What vape ? Is This ?