Paper Bag's Ocarina-Like Vape Synth Reuses As Many Parts as Possible From a "Disposable" Vape

Paper Bag, a collaboration between makers and musicians shuang cai, David Rios, and Kari Love, has released a guide to turning disposable battery-powered vapes into ocarina-inspired synthesizers — with plans for a MIDI-capable version to follow in the near future.

"With over 11 million disposable vapes sold per month, the impact of their e-waste, including discarding rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, is outsized," the Paper Bag team explains. "To highlight the salvageable parts, and divert them into open source hardware projects, we are developing two models of Vape Synthesizers roughly inspired by an ocarina. Both models make use of the original batteries, charging circuit with LED, and case."

Ostensibly developed to help people quit smoke tobacco products, the most popular models of vape work by heating a coil that vaporizes an oily liquid into a plume of fumes — typically, but not necessarily, containing highly-addictive nicotine. The more expensive models are rechargeable and modular, but the market is flooded with "disposable" variants containing batteries, microcontrollers, LEDs, and in some cases even full-color displays, all designed to be used until the liquid reservoir is empty then thrown away.

Paper Bag's project takes a discarded disposable vape and repurposes as many of its parts as possible, not to create a new vape but a musical instrument. The case, battery, and charging circuit are all reused, as is the low-pressure sensor — which, in the original vape, would have been used to trigger the heating coil when it detects the user drawing breath through the mouthpiece.

To this reclaimed hardware the team added a 555 timer, six photoresistors, and a thin speaker. Draw breath through the mouthpiece to active the device and start the speaker, then alter the circuit's resistance by placing your fingers over the photoresistors to change the tone. Unlike the original vape, there's also a USB Type-C port for charging once the battery has been depleted.

Full details are available in the project's guide over on Instructables.