Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape
5 hours ago
- #DIY
- #web-server
- #embedded
- Author collects disposable vapes, initially for batteries, but now for their advanced features like USB C and rechargeable batteries.
- Discovered a PUYA chip in a vape, which is an ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, leading to the idea of hosting a web server on it.
- The microcontroller has modest specs: 24MHz CPU, 24KiB Flash, 3KiB RAM, but deemed sufficient for a web server.
- Used semihosting and SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) to enable internet connectivity via a virtual tty and pyOCD.
- Implemented a web server using uIP, a lightweight IP stack, with modifications for ARM alignment issues.
- Initial performance was poor (~20s page load), but optimizations like batch reads/writes improved it significantly (~160ms page load).
- The project uses most of the available RAM and flash, demonstrating the feasibility of hosting a website on a disposable vape's microcontroller.
- Added a JSON API endpoint for fun, showing request counts and the microcontroller's unique ID.