It’s another one of those fun quirks about our increasingly cyberpunk world — instead of cigarette butts littering our streets, you’re more likely to find disposable vaporizers that have run out of juice. Unfortunately, while the relatively harmless paper remnants of a cig would eventually just fall apart when exposed to the elements, these futuristic caltrops are not only potentially explosive thanks to their internal lithium-ion battery but aren’t going anywhere without some human intervention.
So do the environment and your parts bin a favor: pick them up and salvage their internal cells. As [N-Ender_3] shows with this build, it’s cheap and easy to turn the remnants of a few vapes into a useful USB power bank. In this case, the enclosure is 3D printed, which makes it particularly form-fitting, but you could just as easily pack the cells into something else if you’re not a fan of extruded plastic.
The real star of the show here is an off-the-shelf USB power bank module, which handles safely charging the parallel-wired cells and stepping up the output to 5 V. As explained by [N-Ender_3] in the project description, there is a bit of a caveat here, though — you have to first charge all the cells up (after verifying they’re intact and working in the first place) fully before soldering them together. This simplistic charge module has no ability to individually balance the cells, so if they’re not all within 0.1 V or so of each other, things will start to go south on you.
As always, there’s a level of risk when working with lithium-ion batteries, but we figure they’re less likely to explode when properly repurposed than they are sitting on the street waiting to be run over. Probably.
Disposable Vape Batteries Turned USB Power Bank
Source: Manila Flash Report
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