General > General Technical Chat

Vaping Device Teardown, Battery Waste and YouTube Ad Suitability

(1/6) > >>

edy:
Hi folks,

My dog almost ate a vaping device he found at night in a field. I noticed him holding some green cylinder in his mouth, so I promptly grabbed it. Then I noticed there was blue blinking light! How did it activate? I personally do not smoke or vape and never seen such a device before. After I figured out what it was, I decided to film a teardown to see what goes on inside.

Firstly, I was not aware that Li-Ion or Li-Po batteries were used even in the DISPOSABLE devices. Seems like a waste, as I thought these could be recharged. I thought perhaps a different battery chemistry (non-rechargeable type) that was cheaper may be used. It looks like these DISPOSABLE devices do not allow exchange or refilling of the vaping solution so there's no point to having a rechargeable battery either.

Secondly, I was confused as to the function of that sensor device that looks like a microphone/speaker, but I quickly figured it out after during editing so please forgive the stupid comments. I added text overlay to explain things later. I seems like the air pressure/flow sensor activates the heating element every time someone "draws" from the device and that momentarily vaporizes the liquid in the wick. Otherwise that current through the heating element is off. I believe the blue LED also activates at the same time to indicate when it is on.

Thirdly, I have received limited ad suitability on YouTube for the video which I assume has to do with the fact that it is a VAPING or E-CIGARETTE type of device. It is not directed and does not feature children, and there is no mention of illegal substance use, etc. It is purely a factual scientific analysis of the device and teardown. I do not promote or advocate or even comment on my opinion of whether one should use this or not. I'm assuming YouTube will just mark anything having to do with these more "fringe" things as being advertiser unfriendly. I never knew this, now I know.

Are these things even properly electronically vetted and approved devices or are they generally just made cheaply somewhere and sort of get distributed through some black or grey market? Are there any safety considerations (from the electronic design point of view) and is there any reason why disposable devices would still use what seem to be re-usable batteries? Is it because of the energy density/performance needed to heat up a wick element, or is the cost just that cheap that they can be charged and used once and dropped? Mind you, they do not seem cheap... perhaps the cost of the battery is peanuts compared to the rest of the device. Also, what is the shelf-life of a "precharged" battery like this?

amyk:
bigclivedotcom has gone through a few of those (some of the later videos he has deliberately avoided the word "vape" or "smoke", presumably for the reason you found out) and also laments the waste of it all. In general I think lithium rechargeables have completely eclipsed primary cells and thus become much cheaper even in a disposable application.

eti:
Possession and use of "vaping" equipment is a really simple and effective moron detector.

Gyro:
A couple of bits that could be put to some useful purpose then!

edy:
The video was opportunistic as I would never normally have obtained such a device. I probably shouldn't have been surprised that YouTube won't merge ads with it. I noticed even some videos by Thunderf00t talking about masks and COVID science were also affected because YouTube is lumping all such videos in the same "basket" of conspiracy theories and it can't tell the difference between proponents and debunkers. There are probably plenty of videos showing off vaping products that look exactly like mine but obviously have a very different intent.

One interesting thought is that compared to vaping, smoking may be better for the environment! Think of all the acres of land devoted to growing tobacco and carbon sequestration. Yes eventually the carbon gets released again but there is a cycle present. With vaping, especially disposable, there has to be tons of waste and energy all used that goes to waste and ends up in landfill.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page