A disposable vape serves a webpage in 160 milliseconds after its developer fixes buffering

A vape outlived its intended job and became a web server. Apparently the cloud can fit inside something sold to make a different kind of cloud.

Bogdan Ionescu documented the build in September 2025. This is an older maker project, and his account is the source for the implementation and timings. The little board needs a host computer and debugger for its network path. There is no tiny Wi-Fi data center hiding inside the mouthpiece.

Its connection combines debugger semihosting with SLIP, an old serial networking protocol, and the compact uIP stack. The microcontroller runs the web-serving code while other equipment supplies the route outside. Naming those pieces matters: a clever reuse becomes much more interesting when you can see what the salvaged part actually does.

His first implementation sent and received individual characters. With limited RAM, that sounds frugal, right up until the repeated overhead devours the time saved. He calls the initial performance “actually funny.”

Buffering reads and batching writes changed the outcome. The published measurements describe his setup, rather than a guarantee that a vape could absorb whatever traffic a popular link sends its way. The live device address did not respond during this run; the maker’s separate blog preserves the account.

A buffer is a little waiting room for data. Making each byte travel separately resembles carrying groceries inside one pea at a time. Combining the trips can matter more than asking the person at the door to walk faster. The trade-off is space, and on a tiny chip that space needs an actual budget.

That gives the stunt a useful payload for anyone working on constrained hardware. The question is where time disappears between useful operations. A slower processor may be perfectly adequate once the surrounding code stops making it repeat expensive housekeeping for every crumb of data.

The word disposable also deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets on a package. Reuse should not depend on someone discovering an undocumented bonus computer after the product is exhausted. Exposed interfaces and identifiable components make salvage possible; inaccessible parts make the same exercise much harder.

This one project cannot establish the environmental cost of every vape or prove that reuse offsets manufacturing. It does give a very concrete answer to a smaller question: whether the electronics inside one can still perform useful work after their original purpose has ended.

The battery wasn’t the only thing left.