[treesknees]

I understand what you're getting at, but the 'average' vape pen is essentially a disposable battery and temperature sensor with no additional inputs or features.

After reading some details about the Voyager, I have my doubts that a disposable vape has more computation power [1]. Maybe the higher end devices with programable displays and temperature settings?

[1] https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take-embe...

[dekhn]

A Pinecil (digital soldering pen) is probably a better example. BL706 MCU, "a low-power, high-performance IoT chip that supports BLE/Zigbee wireless networking, ... BL702 has built-in RISC-V 32-bit single-core processor with FPU, the clock frequency can reach 144MHz, has 132KB RAM / 192KB ROM / 1Kb eFuse storage resources, supports external Flash, and optional embedded pSRAM."

The Voyager had a custom-designed processor (well, several) that were basically computers made out of basic logic chips (74xx series); see details here https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take-embe...

Either way, it's clear that we (well, JPL) can build extremely powerful and sophisticated systems with relatively small computers, suggesting that resource constraints can sometimes be a source of stability and creativity.

[shiroiushi]

>The Voyager had a custom-designed processor (well, several) that were basically computers made out of basic logic chips (74xx series);

This was not unusual at the time: many early arcade games were made exactly the same way. They've even been emulated by the MAME project.

[dekhn]

yep, I had fun watching the Ben Eater videos where he builds a retrocomputer out of them. I even bought some of the chips to build a simple 4-bit counter with up/down buttons. It was a real revelation to understand that concept, and I ended up looking at an Apple I motherboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#/media/File:CopsonAppl...) and noticed the regular array of 74xx chips connected by some elegantly laid-out wires.

[nojvek]

New vapes have Bluetooth on a small chip that tracks # of puffs remaining. Being sold for $40 bucks a at store.

Crazy that we have disposable one use electronics now.

[wkat4242]

Well it IS crazy.

This silicon and lithium could be used for much much better things and recycled as well, than a few puffs of a substance only meant to make people addicted.