Conversion of a Vuse (RJR) electronic cigarette to work with standard 510 atomizers/cartridges.
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Looks like 99% of my tools are still packed up in off-site storage, so this project is going to be on hold for anywhere from a week to a month, depending on how quickly I get settled in my new apartment. Still doing plenty of research but there's not much new to add until I get my hands on a logic analyzer and my Hakko iron, the cheap RatShack firestarter I've got isn't going to cut it working on this I don't think..mostly cause the tip is already destroyed from plenty of other projects I've had to do with it.
Lasted under a day of light usage. Very unimpressed. Yet another reason to tear it open and see what's going on! Also after looking at the collar connections again it appears there's only three signals, presumably power, ground, and some form of one-wire protocol to read/write the EEPROM. That rules out the potential match for the EEPROM in the last post.
The battery LED blinks twice when the cartridge is running low (according to what they consider low, at least) and will signal when it's 'empty' as well, so there's definitely some smarts in this thing, probably a small MCU in the battery that reads the EEPROM in the cartridge, handles the LED functions, and then passes voltage to the atomizer if the value on the cartridge EEPROM is greater than zero..then of course deincrements the value.
Surprisingly, this is actually a fairly decent ecig, not to promote buying from big tobacco, but for what I paid I'm certainly pleased..and in a pinch, as long as it worked, I didn't really care. What I've figured out so far is that the battery won't even fire without a cartridge attached, it just blinks the led in a white/red pattern, so there's obviously some sort of communication going on between the chip inside the battery and the chip inside the cartridge. First step is going to be getting a logic analyzer of some sort, probably my old Arduino once I find it, and a few spare cartridges to hack up into a sniffing interface. From there it's a matter of decoding the data being transferred, and hopefully finding a way to spoof the protocol and/or reprogram whatever chip is inside the cartridges. If anyone has information on the chips being used, please feel free to let me know! I'll verify the part numbers posted in the imgur gallery linked above once I finish this cartridge and can tear it open.
Edit: Closest match found with some quick Google searching for the chip inside the cartridges: http://rohmfs.rohm.com/en/products/databook/datasheet/ic/memory/eeprom/br24g08-3a-e.pdf Markings don't all match, but it'd make sense for the chip to be some sort of an EEPROM, with the unknown chip in the battery being the brains of the operation that checks and updates the 'fill level' value on the EEPROM. Going to have to find something I can use as an EEPROM dumper it seems.
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I found a way to get unlimited puffs off your vuse. All you have to do is look at the circuit board where the white and red LEDs are. On the top of the board look at the opposite end with out the cable. You will see five very small holes right on the edge of the board. Use very small sharpe cutting tool to cutt the middle hole making sure to not cutt any of the other ones. Doing this will allow you to have unlimited puffs and be able to refill your carts with vape juice. Will be be able to also charge your battery with no problems but the red light won't show its charging. Email me at Ericmonroe23@gmail.com for pics . I've done this to about 4 vuse batteries and they work flawless.
I'm a bit late coming here, I've found that this method works best when you have no cartridges left to perform the "cartridge clone glitch."
I really wish there was some sort of gimmick for this... Enjoy Vuze, do not enjoy the cost.
The simplest method I've found is to disconnect the cartridge before the eeprom is written during a puff. You can read a bit about it here http://se.azinstall.net/2015/10/hacking-vuse-e-cig-puff-counter.html
VUSE BATTERY MOD - DISABLE THE COUNTER in the BATTERY
I have figured out a way to disable the counter on the VUSE. In order to disable the counter, you need to take the top plastic part off of the end of the Battery. The end that has the LED light. You will see a small circle with metal on it. The go ahead and plug it in to charge, and find the tiny led that is glowing, then you will need to take a razor blade and cut the light so it no longer works, Be careful as to not cut through the brown circle, you just want to nick the LED light so that it no longer works. Then you willl be able to use your old "Empty" cartridges on the Battery that you just modified. Please note that the LED will no longer work, but big deal because now you can save $ and not waste the juice that is left in the "empty" cartridge.
I have been able to replicate this and make it work over a dozen times, My Dog actually figured this out for me - my dog ate the tip off a battery, and then it wouldnt light up, however when I went to take a puff, it still worked.
My dog is a Genius!
Hope this helps
Peace,
Anonymous Dog Owner
Has anybody else tried this? I don't want to give big tobacco extra dough for having to buy another battery if it turns out somebody is trolling.
Inspect what you expect
I don't see why it would work. It's tough to tell for sure, but it looks like the white LED is connected to pin 14 of the ATtiny84 then a resistor to either ground or vcc.
I just tried this.... awesome sauce!
But some things to note. So I also read elsewhere from a more informed source that noted he hadn't tried this method but heard about and circled the white led on a pic as the one to disable so he thought. Well he was right. However this post said to plug in and see the illuminated led and cut that one l, without specifying color. Well I debated because the red led is what lights when charging, however if it is fully charged then the white one lights. Well I decided to try the red one first and that was bad move. It stopped working altogether Avenue on good cartridge :( so I cut the white led and then ran a piece of solder across the two points of the red led to reconnect the circuit and wahlah! My "empty" berry cartridge worked again. Unfortunately now I don't have either LEDs now but if you do it right the first time and cut the white led you will still get low battery warning and be able to know it is done charging when the red led isn't flashing.
Stoked!!!
IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!
OK HOLD THE PHONE!!!!
So here is the deal. I should have got back on here right away when I found this out so I do apologize if this messed up anybody's battery. The next day I found that the battery I modified stopped working after a few puffs... But I'm not sure yet if this was caused by my mistake of cutting the red led first and having to repair connection by jumping it with solder. It seems I can put the modified battery back on the charger and get a few more puffs but then it stops again.... I will have to come back with an update when I modify another one to know for sure.
looked at the vuse, the cart. part has a 8 pin chip (c 4h dd) and only 3 leads in use.... a resistor and a diode, it counts the number of times its used and then sends no signal to the main chip, im going to swap out the main chip unit with the simple one from an throw away ecig, which ive recharged and refilled many times , ill let ya know
Found it out, Don't mess with the battery it works after. Keeping this short email me for pics and step by step Nicholas.kaloi@yahoo.com
After a day of using it like this, it eventually went wrong. Not completely sure what happened, but I took one single drag this morning (after having refilled it 3 or 4 times yesterday), and it decided to start throwing its error blinks. Dead carts still behave as they should, but this one either became corrupt, or suffered some other malfunction. At any rate, while this probably isn't a sustainable technique due to the potential for extra wear on the contacts, this should at least let someone get what they paid for out of a given cartridge. It's also worth nothing that I was able to repeat the 3-blinks fuel low code many dozens of times before screwing up and not disconnecting it. If that's a pressure switch and not a sensor proper, it might be possible to rewire a battery to break the write to the cartridge somehow.
On a hunch, I decided to test the following... while taking a drag, twist off the cartridge to disconnect it. Doesn't seem to update the count. I've succeeded in making in blink 3x several times in a row now.
I'm guessing you gave up on this? Looks like your last post was a year ago. I'm hoping not, because I really like your concept here.
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I made a video of how to reset the cartridge counter by swapping it quickly after taking a drag from a good cartridge. It writes the good cartridges amount to the expired cartridge.