No joke I actually do collect those myself and repurpose them all. They're perfect for arduino sensors and stuff outdoors. Thrown it in a tiny D printed case and slap a solar cell on top. When the battery finally stops working, it goes to the local shop disposal bin, lol. (They have one where they accept old batteries to be recycled/sold for scrap. It's a big fireproof box. Looks like a cash drop safe, lol. Probably was at some point in it's origin...
Same. I am making a powerbank with them it’s going to be 5s5p and have a 20v PD output. Just need a few more of the 550mAh Cells that are getting harder to find.. “most are 350mAh now” I also have one large cell that came from a vape powering my psp it’s a 1500 mAH so works for hours.
My suggestion (although it's just as atrociously wasteful as the original device): a Valentine's card that plays Rick Astley. The company I used to work for three away a load of money on some of these, containing a promotional video for a service that, by the time the cards arrived, they decided to stop offering.
It's funny you mention turning it into a Valentine's card- 2 years ago I got my hands on the very same Growteam ad display.. found a heart shaped MDF frame at the dollar store, cut a square hole in the front for the display, 3d printed a frame for around the LCD hole, drilled holes in the back panel for the buttons, and loaded up a video I made with pictures & soundtrack and gave it to my valentine.
Wow...it's amazing when you realize we've come to the point where mini screens, processors and batteries are now part of disposable junk mail. The more produced, the lower the prices will go which means more of them as junk mail. And you have all that wasted cardboard packaging. I'm sure at first people will open these in large numbers to see the videos play. But in time, like all junk mail, many will go straight to landfill without ever being opened. As for the steam radiator, sometimes raising the radiator up on one end, so it slopes towards the inlet valve, will stop the noises. The noises are from water being trapped in the pipes where steam is trying to rise past it.
These aren't quite to the junk mail stage yet. These things are generally only mailed out to very high-profit potential clients. I've also seen them used for prospectus (prospecti?) mailers from large companies, and the occasional shareholder's report for shareholders above a certain stake. The people getting these are the equivalent of folks who get whole 3D printers sent to them for free in the youtube maker community.
@@trevorhaddox6884 Sounds tragic, but its always been the way, going back to the dawn of time. The shameful part is how hard this stuff is to break down, but even that's not without precedent.
We had the bomb squad called out to the office once because some asshole sent us one of these things, we X-Ray all incoming mail and it looked hella suspicious
This is one of the major issues with this sort of thing. Generally if you're being sent something with electronics it should be in response to an order or request that you've made. The volatility of Li-Ion batteries means that _unsolicited_ electronics of this nature could be viewed a form of attack, even if there's no intent on the part of the sender that the target connect the device to any system at their end... 📱🔋🔥⚠
@@dieseldragon6756I wouldn’t go so far as saying that receiving unexpected lion batteries are an attack, but they certainly are unwanted and in some environments will need special treatment.
@@dieseldragon6756 not just that, the random tangle of wires inside with some going into big solid rectangles on the screen, if you don’t know what you’re looking at, had alarm bells ringing
@@bytesabre Oh, of course. I've run into that myself in the past; Flying to Germany and had some Metal accessories (The _obligatory_ spiked bracers 🤘) in my bag for a few gigs I wanted to go to while away. Never once thought they'd resemble bullets under an X-Ray... 😳 Thankfully, no trouble at least - Just explained what it was and showed them. Still had to check my bag (So bye bye laptop! 💻💥☹) but at least I didn't go and cause a full closure of Heathrow airport! 🛫👍
The specs state "Support MP3，WMA，AAC, OGG, APE full format decoder. " so you might need to modify the linux os command lines for file type access. You could make a Christmas decoration for the tree with a video display maybe.
As a boomer I watched the Jetsons on Saturday mornings and this reminds me of one episode where Elroy was watching his favorite TV program on the back of a cereal box.
A friend of mine found a packet of 25 pieces of small USB charging boards for lithium cells on eBay. They work quite good, have a good charging circuit and cut out at about 3.5V battery voltage. They put out 3.3V while running on battery, so we start building little 3D printed 3.3V powerbanks. She use it to run a bunch of self cycling RGB LEDs. If she goes on a rave she put these LEDs in her hair and on her clothes and have this little powerbank circuit in her pocket. One of these last for several hours, so she just carry around two or three of it.
I mean hey, tiny screens are kinda hard to come by if you aren't a huge company. This could be genuinely useful to receive if you could use it like a laptop screen with a board.
The cheap charging port I have used for those vape batteries is TP4056. Theres probably more types but I just wanted to leave that here since you mentioned it.
The esmt chip is most likely nand storage, the hynix chip is probs ram for a frame buffer, and the other chip is probably the video processor and probably an arm cpu for running code to receive input to turn the device on, and control volume, brightness, etc.
It seems rare to see these highly integrated devices have a separate RAM. If someone was _really_ motivated, I wonder what sort of devices could be hung off that bus for MMIO.
NGL, I kind of like the idea of receiving a few of these to practice soldering/tinkering with. Although for 99% of people it would be tremendous e-waste.
Same, starting to wonder if it'd be worth trying to get in contact with someone in recycling services just to see if they have some of these that they wouldn't mind me messing with.
Send me one! I would love to integrate it into my refrigerator door and just have videos of dancing food playing nonstop without sound. Or into my router, and having animated computer code (like from the matrix) playing, or into my game console, the possibilities ARE ENDLESS
I’ve had a few, they had bigger screens and mini USB ports which allowed charging and come up as a drive! You can replace the video with your own if you name it the same as the original. Fun to give to someone! Yes it is wasteful, but so are 90% of all products on sale today anyway.
I seem to remember there being a company that made those junk mail video player things you showed, and they called it "video in print". The video players themselves appear to me to have modified firmware programmed to immediately launch into the video player and play the first video that comes up.
Great video. A quick tip regarding the hot glue. Use some IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) on the hot glue, and it will just pop off. Could not believe how well it works until I tried it. :)
I like the idea of using it for a scavenger hunt. You could put them in rocks and in pieces of wood, and they would contain instructions for the next piece. It would be awesome! Even the shittiness of the screen would play into the retro feel of it. Like a video game from the 90s with live action cutscenes
2 things i get from this... 1) whatever your product, if i get a video letter AD im done using your product ever again. 2) i will mod this into something else without ever seeing your ad.raspberry pi go BRRR
Worth taking a look at the board and any datasheets you can get hold of for that video processor. If you can find a serial port on there it's going to make your life a ton easier for reverse engineering
A friend wired a bunch or evaps in series. Put them in a plastic box that he printed, and made a backup battery for his computers in case the power goes out. It gives him several hours' worth of operating time. Fully rechargable.
ooooh would love to probe the crap out of that... I wonder how much additional stuff was left in the linux build they threw into it. Any obvious looking debug pins? If you can see 'where' it's looking in the filetable you might be able to see where the 'photos' are expected, I'd be thinking DCIM directory layouts for that.
I keep most of my disposable vapes that have been spent with a recharging port, but I have no use for them, and been trying to find people that may want the batteries for projects, I'd rather see them recycled or upcycled properly rather than binned.
If you do shows and conventions it could be a very awesome animated name badge. Would probably sell at said conventions too. Would look into if if I had the time.
My work had a bunch of these. I got a few from them. I'm not hoping to change the files on them. But the parts alone is worth it including the batteries. I would love to reprogram them and put a photo or video on there.
I think it could be used as some kind of ebook reader or information cache for people who get lost in far off places or if you don't want to carry your phone. Or put some interesting stuff on it and store in a time capsule for future generations to find.
the nand flash will lose all of its stored data pretty fast i dont think they put high quality flash in to what they only designed for one use @@go2viraj
If you can't get it to play JPEG files you could always work around it by converting to video files. FFmpeg supports taking a series of pictures and converting to a fractional framerate video, I'm sure other tools would also work. For best results you may wish to set the I-frame interval to eliminate "motion" artifacting.
I was given one of these once, from some random company, and I decided to remove the internals and put a small collection of memes on it that were more popular in 2020 when I had it.
Could probably make these for like $4 paper speaker very basic display smaller battery lose the USB and have a terminal charger Don't need that big of a magnet either The processor could be cheaper and single write memory it's a lot cheaper
@@nicholaswouters1203 Yup. It has a touchscreen display on the front. You can set/see the temps, see if the filter is good. It also has a USB port for firmware upgrades, and also allows for up to 100 photos to be uploaded.
@@tehaxor69 A fridge with a USB port? Putting aside the number of owners who must be using that for device charging without even thinking about _why_ it's there, that sounds to me like it's just asking for trouble... ❄💻☠ I'm a disabled (Thus; poor) person living in the UK so I don't even have a refrigerator...But if I did, the only sort of _port_ I'd ever want to find in it is the bottled variety... 🍾🍷😉
Its a 32 bit probably mips actions semiconductor chip so i think it is possible. I found an actions chip in a cheap chromecast device that ran linux 2.6 skimmed down
That looks a lot like one I have in my junk bin that came from the online print shop that my friend worked at. I didn't dabble with firmware at all, but I was able to put MP4 files on the flash and get them to play. I'll dig it out if that would help!
Love the vid and as for e vape carts (unless you mean the batteries) they are similar to wall socket air fresheners so if you could refill the cart with fragrant oil and something to gently suck on it, you could make a air freshener.
These thing were fun, ordered some Samsung stuff online and it somehow came with one of these promoting the Z Fold, whats better is it got a 7 inch 1080p screen, a fat 256/512 MB storage and a micro USB jack for data. Not sure what were going on inside their head since I assumed it was more expensive than what I bought but a free media player is a free media player.
I had thought about doing this years ago but decided against it because of ALL the reasons mentioned in this video along with cost. But to be fair it was for very specific high end proposals that where requested and not Radom solicitations. We instead opted for a Unique QR code on an aluminum business card.
I wonder if you could run a game console emulator on it? This stuff is crazy. It's so wasteful and very delicate for something with a lithium battery. My parents don't even open all their junk mail before throwing it into their wood stove to help start a fire. I'll have to warn them about these to prevent them from starting a much larger fire than expected.
I would love to find a way of interfacing the screen to a microcontroller. It looks considerably bigger than the 128x64 0.96" 1-bit displays I have at the moment.
Good video. It might make you happy to hear a lot of the disposable manufacturers are moving towards capacitors and not lithium batteries. Not perfect but at least they're not wasting all that lithium. I will miss the free batteries for projects tho
@@RinoaL nah some of the bigger ones are legit using capacitors, in Europe at least. I was in the industry for 10y lol. Might be a diff story in America tho, in Europe, were limited to 2ml capacity so you only need a battery of 350-650mah for the whole thing, about 600 Puffs. I imagine when you've got 2000mah+ cells they're harder to replace with reliable capacitors at scale. Also it's not all manufacturers, it's not law or anything (yet). And there's tonnes of fakes on the market too. The Elf Bar brands and sub brands (so Lost Mary etc also) are going capacitors in Europe, and iirc the SKE Crystal's were thinking of moving over, not sure if they have. Like I said, still not ideal.... better than Li tho
I got one of these a while back. Maybe it has to do with an old LLC and my website, or my house's previous owner's businesses. Honestly, I got no idea. But I called to demand not being sent more of this stuff, and the dbag on the other end just kept trash talking my SEO or some crap, and I had to hang up while he was spewing verbal garbage about needing to give him money so I have a bigger internet presence.
pro tip! Hit all the buttons surrounding that screen on the gas pump. At Shell and a local chain near me (Cumberland Farms), they thankfully do have a mute button. At Cumby's it's the button above the bottom right button.
... well, plus side, with some reverse engineering we should be able to turn this into a half decent portable video viewer. Downside: how many of these are gonna get junked, lithium battery and all?
A friend of mine rescued a video player ad unit from his grocery store's trash years ago & gave it to me. I quickly figured out how to connect it to Windows XP & copy off the default video file on it, get the size of its default internal Flash drive storage, and then encode a copy of Ghibli's Iblard Time to fit on it in AVI. It plays for about 30 minutes. While I could possibly take the screen to use for other purposes, I'm going to leave it intact. I haven't been able to change its boot up picture which still shows its former use.
While its amazing that the electronics have become so cheap that this is even viable, its disgusting that the technology is being used in such a wasteful manner.
My guess is the processing unit is not capable of running a program that supports looking into those files. Given the strange usb logo it's probably Chinese made and has its limitations. But that's just one guess theirs many scenarios.
Yah, but if there isn't enough memory to store or to execute the program then it's a no go. Of course, I got your video on in the background and I'm paying half attention to it, so the hell if know.@@RinoaL
First impressions of the board make me think this is something off the shelf from China for portable video players. There’s a lot of unused pads up the top at 7:39 that are likely for external inputs in addition to the buttons provided. Chip on the left is NAND, on the right is 256Mbit of DRAM.
Dunno why, but my comments keep getting deleted, so I’ll keep it short. zxfelec seems to be the source of these cards. Actions Semiconductors lists them as a customer for the V100 chips, and zxfelec seems to sell or offer information on the V100 chip.
V100 chip itself seems to be a series of MIPS32 chips designed for embedded video products. The only one I can find data on was apparently designed for 3D video/VR headsets, but I’m not certain that refers to the particular V100 chip in this device
@@RinoaL I figured. The original comments had a lot more information on them, they might still be sitting in the moderation tools or whatever, if you were wanting more info. Anyway, good luck repurposing it.
I love these, i got a bunch from a holiday light company. I hack and reuse them tons of other stuff, like i made an urn, displays for my products, burthday card and a proposal, ill take some too.
I had a crap load of these with a much bigger screen and connected to a raspberry pie to watch films while traveling i am going to make more to sell as i have around 200 of them
Free battery and charger and so much valuable stuff there to hack for other things to charge or store stuff videos,picture frame if good enough so on. Find a cool statu and put this behind it as eyes moving around like there following you.
Wow that's nice of them they're mailing you free components that's pretty cool. I guess it's time to desolder any treasure while you still can before they figure out they're just wasting money.
Make a point with it and show us where it really belongs. Make a video with instructions on how to use a toilet, make the hardware suitable to install under the seat lid. It gives instructions every time the lid is opened.
Put your own videos on them and send them back to let them know what you think. (Don't actually cuz it will just be some underpaid person opening the mail that has to put up with it but it's a funny thought)
If you go the movie prop direction, make it look like a 2000s action movie prop where it's like, silver and has a lot of extra little swooshes and details like a lot of stuff had back then. Basically what people thought like a futuristic PDA would've been.
I don't need any more proof than this to show that our society has got a major E-waste addiction problem... but you know what this just creates a whole new level of free potential to cause all sorts of mischief xD
Heck yeah now I have something to power with all the vape cells I've been collecting off the street 😂😭 this is wild
Hey Rinoa, look who is here 🖐🏻✨🍫🍪
No joke I actually do collect those myself and repurpose them all. They're perfect for arduino sensors and stuff outdoors. Thrown it in a tiny D printed case and slap a solar cell on top. When the battery finally stops working, it goes to the local shop disposal bin, lol. (They have one where they accept old batteries to be recycled/sold for scrap. It's a big fireproof box. Looks like a cash drop safe, lol. Probably was at some point in it's origin...
Same. I am making a powerbank with them it’s going to be 5s5p and have a 20v PD output. Just need a few more of the 550mAh Cells that are getting harder to find.. “most are 350mAh now” I also have one large cell that came from a vape powering my psp it’s a 1500 mAH so works for hours.
My suggestion (although it's just as atrociously wasteful as the original device): a Valentine's card that plays Rick Astley.
The company I used to work for three away a load of money on some of these, containing a promotional video for a service that, by the time the cards arrived, they decided to stop offering.
will happen soon
It's funny you mention turning it into a Valentine's card- 2 years ago I got my hands on the very same Growteam ad display.. found a heart shaped MDF frame at the dollar store, cut a square hole in the front for the display, 3d printed a frame for around the LCD hole, drilled holes in the back panel for the buttons, and loaded up a video I made with pictures & soundtrack and gave it to my valentine.
Wow...it's amazing when you realize we've come to the point where mini screens, processors and batteries are now part of disposable junk mail. The more produced, the lower the prices will go which means more of them as junk mail. And you have all that wasted cardboard packaging. I'm sure at first people will open these in large numbers to see the videos play. But in time, like all junk mail, many will go straight to landfill without ever being opened. As for the steam radiator, sometimes raising the radiator up on one end, so it slopes towards the inlet valve, will stop the noises. The noises are from water being trapped in the pipes where steam is trying to rise past it.
More processing power than it took to get to the moon...now used to make literal trash.
These aren't quite to the junk mail stage yet. These things are generally only mailed out to very high-profit potential clients. I've also seen them used for prospectus (prospecti?) mailers from large companies, and the occasional shareholder's report for shareholders above a certain stake. The people getting these are the equivalent of folks who get whole 3D printers sent to them for free in the youtube maker community.
Oh ok that makes sense. @@bearnaff9387
@@trevorhaddox6884 Sounds tragic, but its always been the way, going back to the dawn of time. The shameful part is how hard this stuff is to break down, but even that's not without precedent.
so we've made it to the point in sci-fi where tv's are given away but a family sized box of rice costs $5, oh wait nope that's real life now.
We had the bomb squad called out to the office once because some asshole sent us one of these things, we X-Ray all incoming mail and it looked hella suspicious
This is one of the major issues with this sort of thing. Generally if you're being sent something with electronics it should be in response to an order or request that you've made. The volatility of Li-Ion batteries means that _unsolicited_ electronics of this nature could be viewed a form of attack, even if there's no intent on the part of the sender that the target connect the device to any system at their end... 📱🔋🔥⚠
@@dieseldragon6756I wouldn’t go so far as saying that receiving unexpected lion batteries are an attack, but they certainly are unwanted and in some environments will need special treatment.
@@dieseldragon6756 not just that, the random tangle of wires inside with some going into big solid rectangles on the screen, if you don’t know what you’re looking at, had alarm bells ringing
@@bytesabre Oh, of course. I've run into that myself in the past; Flying to Germany and had some Metal accessories (The _obligatory_ spiked bracers 🤘) in my bag for a few gigs I wanted to go to while away. Never once thought they'd resemble bullets under an X-Ray... 😳
Thankfully, no trouble at least - Just explained what it was and showed them. Still had to check my bag (So bye bye laptop! 💻💥☹) but at least I didn't go and cause a full closure of Heathrow airport! 🛫👍
I've never wanted junk mail more in my life...
The specs state "Support MP3，WMA，AAC, OGG, APE full format decoder. " so you might need to modify the linux os command lines for file type access. You could make a Christmas decoration for the tree with a video display maybe.
Yeah thats why I kept trying, I might try to find a serial connection to it to remote-in over serial
it supports monkeys? (dankpods refrence)
@@RinoaL Yes, this is free material for DIY :)
As a boomer I watched the Jetsons on Saturday mornings and this reminds me of one episode where Elroy was watching his favorite TV program on the back of a cereal box.
A friend of mine found a packet of 25 pieces of small USB charging boards for lithium cells on eBay. They work quite good, have a good charging circuit and cut out at about 3.5V battery voltage. They put out 3.3V while running on battery, so we start building little 3D printed 3.3V powerbanks.
She use it to run a bunch of self cycling RGB LEDs. If she goes on a rave she put these LEDs in her hair and on her clothes and have this little powerbank circuit in her pocket. One of these last for several hours, so she just carry around two or three of it.
I mean hey, tiny screens are kinda hard to come by if you aren't a huge company. This could be genuinely useful to receive if you could use it like a laptop screen with a board.
We just need a way to get these into the hands of people
Would be cool to use as a screen for a Raspberry Pi
You could try to dump the Firmware of it. Then try to extract its contents with binwalk.
Yeah! Just take of the esmt flash and put it in a flash reader
@@309electronics5It might be easier to just solder some fine wires to it.
Read the NAND IC with a programmer and everything will become clear.
The cheap charging port I have used for those vape batteries is TP4056. Theres probably more types but I just wanted to leave that here since you mentioned it.
grandma: the mail keeps sending laptops to us.
me: that's a video ad.
The esmt chip is most likely nand storage, the hynix chip is probs ram for a frame buffer, and the other chip is probably the video processor and probably an arm cpu for running code to receive input to turn the device on, and control volume, brightness, etc.
Yep! Esmt is flash, that weird logo center qfp package is an ACTIONS semiconductor processor, the hynix chip is the ram. Probably a few mbs only
It seems rare to see these highly integrated devices have a separate RAM. If someone was _really_ motivated, I wonder what sort of devices could be hung off that bus for MMIO.
NGL, I kind of like the idea of receiving a few of these to practice soldering/tinkering with.
Although for 99% of people it would be tremendous e-waste.
Same, starting to wonder if it'd be worth trying to get in contact with someone in recycling services just to see if they have some of these that they wouldn't mind me messing with.
Send me one! I would love to integrate it into my refrigerator door and just have videos of dancing food playing nonstop without sound. Or into my router, and having animated computer code (like from the matrix) playing, or into my game console, the possibilities ARE ENDLESS
I’ve had a few, they had bigger screens and mini USB ports which allowed charging and come up as a drive! You can replace the video with your own if you name it the same as the original. Fun to give to someone! Yes it is wasteful, but so are 90% of all products on sale today anyway.
I seem to remember there being a company that made those junk mail video player things you showed, and they called it "video in print". The video players themselves appear to me to have modified firmware programmed to immediately launch into the video player and play the first video that comes up.
Great video. A quick tip regarding the hot glue. Use some IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) on the hot glue, and it will just pop off. Could not believe how well it works until I tried it. :)
Yeah somebody mentioned that, I hadnt heard it before!
I like the idea of using it for a scavenger hunt. You could put them in rocks and in pieces of wood, and they would contain instructions for the next piece. It would be awesome! Even the shittiness of the screen would play into the retro feel of it. Like a video game from the 90s with live action cutscenes
2 things i get from this...
1) whatever your product, if i get a video letter AD im done using your product ever again.
2) i will mod this into something else without ever seeing your ad.raspberry pi go BRRR
Obviously you need to put Rickroll on it, desolder the USB port, and send it to the company's mailing address
Worth taking a look at the board and any datasheets you can get hold of for that video processor. If you can find a serial port on there it's going to make your life a ton easier for reverse engineering
A friend wired a bunch or evaps in series. Put them in a plastic box that he printed,
and made a backup battery for his computers in case the power goes out. It gives him several hours' worth of operating time. Fully rechargable.
ooooh would love to probe the crap out of that... I wonder how much additional stuff was left in the linux build they threw into it. Any obvious looking debug pins? If you can see 'where' it's looking in the filetable you might be able to see where the 'photos' are expected, I'd be thinking DCIM directory layouts for that.
oh, and I saw somewhere (probably hackaday) evape batteries being re-used as a chargeable battery bank.
Oh please try connecting multiple screens together to make a larger screen similar idea to large stadium screens being stitched together
I am glad that E-Waste isn't sent to me in the mail, but I would definitely reverse engineer these if received.
A very interesting teardown of a hopelessly crappy disposable device... I never knew these things existed.
I have one of these stashed from a few years ago bc I didn’t want to toss it. Need to dig it out and see if it’s the same thing.
I keep most of my disposable vapes that have been spent with a recharging port, but I have no use for them, and been trying to find people that may want the batteries for projects, I'd rather see them recycled or upcycled properly rather than binned.
If you do shows and conventions it could be a very awesome animated name badge. Would probably sell at said conventions too. Would look into if if I had the time.
I would love to see somebody hack one of these to run doom, I know with 64 MB of Ram and 400 MHz mips processor it easily could.
I'd like to get a couple of those just to gut and make some diorama screens.
My work had a bunch of these. I got a few from them. I'm not hoping to change the files on them. But the parts alone is worth it including the batteries. I would love to reprogram them and put a photo or video on there.
I think it could be used as some kind of ebook reader or information cache for people who get lost in far off places or if you don't want to carry your phone. Or put some interesting stuff on it and store in a time capsule for future generations to find.
Lithium ion batteries degrade over time, I don't think time capsule idea will work
Lithium only degrades when kept above 80% state of charge. I have lithium cells in storage from 1998 that are still good.
@@RinoaL Good to know. Anywhere online I looked, it says they discharge over time and once completely discharged, they go bad.
the nand flash will lose all of its stored data pretty fast i dont think they put high quality flash in to what they only designed for one use @@go2viraj
Tool used screens like this in the CD version of the "Fear Inoculum" album.
They will definitely not end up in the landfill!
If you can't get it to play JPEG files you could always work around it by converting to video files. FFmpeg supports taking a series of pictures and converting to a fractional framerate video, I'm sure other tools would also work. For best results you may wish to set the I-frame interval to eliminate "motion" artifacting.
I was given one of these once, from some random company, and I decided to remove the internals and put a small collection of memes on it that were more popular in 2020 when I had it.
I got one of these from Lenovo if I am not mistaken at work a couple of years ago.
I wonder if the memory chip to be expanded I wonder what the processor memory capability handling is or is that maximum that it can handle?
4:47 These are the best screwdrivers money can buy
Indeed
It would make a nice geocache.
Could probably make these for like $4 paper speaker very basic display smaller battery lose the USB and have a terminal charger Don't need that big of a magnet either The processor could be cheaper and single write memory it's a lot cheaper
Did you try a DCIM folder for images? My refrigerator requires that for its slideshow, it has no camera.
Now that is a good idea
Your refridgerator has a slideshow function ?
@@nicholaswouters1203 Yup. It has a touchscreen display on the front. You can set/see the temps, see if the filter is good. It also has a USB port for firmware upgrades, and also allows for up to 100 photos to be uploaded.
@@tehaxor69 A fridge with a USB port? Putting aside the number of owners who must be using that for device charging without even thinking about _why_ it's there, that sounds to me like it's just asking for trouble... ❄💻☠
I'm a disabled (Thus; poor) person living in the UK so I don't even have a refrigerator...But if I did, the only sort of _port_ I'd ever want to find in it is the bottled variety... 🍾🍷😉
may need to ground pins on the controller to activate music.
yeah
*These would be great for sending as giant Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas video "cards" for family and friends!* 😁
Ya basically those electronic picture frames.
"Video ads in the mail" is a phrase I have never expected to be true in my lifetime.
can you make a pip boy out of that?
4 pads at the bottom left of the board in 11:12 looks like it might be UART. Maybe try connecting to it to see boot log?
That was going to be my next magic trick hehe
I wonder if somehow, a really skimmed down version of Linux with a GUI could be flashed on this thing.
Its a 32 bit probably mips actions semiconductor chip so i think it is possible. I found an actions chip in a cheap chromecast device that ran linux 2.6 skimmed down
Im willing to bet NetBSD would run on it.
That looks a lot like one I have in my junk bin that came from the online print shop that my friend worked at. I didn't dabble with firmware at all, but I was able to put MP4 files on the flash and get them to play. I'll dig it out if that would help!
Love the vid and as for e vape carts (unless you mean the batteries) they are similar to wall socket air fresheners so if you could refill the cart with fragrant oil and something to gently suck on it, you could make a air freshener.
Well they have a lithium ion battery and a circuit board alongside the liquid now.
These thing were fun, ordered some Samsung stuff online and it somehow came with one of these promoting the Z Fold, whats better is it got a 7 inch 1080p screen, a fat 256/512 MB storage and a micro USB jack for data. Not sure what were going on inside their head since I assumed it was more expensive than what I bought but a free media player is a free media player.
I had thought about doing this years ago but decided against it because of ALL the reasons mentioned in this video along with cost. But to be fair it was for very specific high end proposals that where requested and not Radom solicitations. We instead opted for a Unique QR code on an aluminum business card.
I noticed the Video folder is not pluralized. Perhaps drop the s in Pictures and Photos folders.
ah yeah your right
I wonder if you could run a game console emulator on it?
This stuff is crazy. It's so wasteful and very delicate for something with a lithium battery. My parents don't even open all their junk mail before throwing it into their wood stove to help start a fire. I'll have to warn them about these to prevent them from starting a much larger fire than expected.
Unlikely they'll be getting these unless they're someone who some giant tech bro style company is wanting their bussiness. They're $30.
I wouldn't advise plugging these into your main PC. Maybe a secondary one.
I would gladly take like 50 of those off anyone's hands for the price of postage, because they're so good for taking apart for parts.
I would love to find a way of interfacing the screen to a microcontroller. It looks considerably bigger than the 128x64 0.96" 1-bit displays I have at the moment.
So they literally brought those showcase displays from retail stores straight to your house?
Good video. It might make you happy to hear a lot of the disposable manufacturers are moving towards capacitors and not lithium batteries. Not perfect but at least they're not wasting all that lithium. I will miss the free batteries for projects tho
Oh I havent seen that, dont be confused though, theyve started putting lithium ion batteries into capacitor housings.
@@RinoaL nah some of the bigger ones are legit using capacitors, in Europe at least. I was in the industry for 10y lol. Might be a diff story in America tho, in Europe, were limited to 2ml capacity so you only need a battery of 350-650mah for the whole thing, about 600 Puffs. I imagine when you've got 2000mah+ cells they're harder to replace with reliable capacitors at scale.
Also it's not all manufacturers, it's not law or anything (yet). And there's tonnes of fakes on the market too. The Elf Bar brands and sub brands (so Lost Mary etc also) are going capacitors in Europe, and iirc the SKE Crystal's were thinking of moving over, not sure if they have.
Like I said, still not ideal.... better than Li tho
Very cool to see ultracapacitors being used,
I have been seeing these at thrift stores recently and they sell them for like $10 I don't think they know what they are
I got one of these a while back. Maybe it has to do with an old LLC and my website, or my house's previous owner's businesses. Honestly, I got no idea. But I called to demand not being sent more of this stuff, and the dbag on the other end just kept trash talking my SEO or some crap, and I had to hang up while he was spewing verbal garbage about needing to give him money so I have a bigger internet presence.
wow lol
I thought ads blaring at the gas pump was bad.. tf ???
pro tip! Hit all the buttons surrounding that screen on the gas pump. At Shell and a local chain near me (Cumberland Farms), they thankfully do have a mute button. At Cumby's it's the button above the bottom right button.
@@alexsteele1856 I'll try that out. Thanks.
... well, plus side, with some reverse engineering we should be able to turn this into a half decent portable video viewer. Downside: how many of these are gonna get junked, lithium battery and all?
a old laptop or phone will do a lot better company's should not be making e waste and the almost 100 mb storage is small
A friend of mine rescued a video player ad unit from his grocery store's trash years ago & gave it to me. I quickly figured out how to connect it to Windows XP & copy off the default video file on it, get the size of its default internal Flash drive storage, and then encode a copy of Ghibli's Iblard Time to fit on it in AVI. It plays for about 30 minutes. While I could possibly take the screen to use for other purposes, I'm going to leave it intact.
I haven't been able to change its boot up picture which still shows its former use.
Now turn them into Christmas cards and rebuild them and send them to family members
You should play pixel art on it maybe some lo-fi music
While its amazing that the electronics have become so cheap that this is even viable, its disgusting that the technology is being used in such a wasteful manner.
My guess is the processing unit is not capable of running a program that supports looking into those files. Given the strange usb logo it's probably Chinese made and has its limitations. But that's just one guess theirs many scenarios.
I show in the video that it says it supports it on the website so its a matter of juat figuring out how it wants it
Yah, but if there isn't enough memory to store or to execute the program then it's a no go. Of course, I got your video on in the background and I'm paying half attention to it, so the hell if know.@@RinoaL
Its an actions semiconductor 32 bit cpu, probably mips. Actions semiconductors is a chinese brand so i dont think it runs much
I think the best project for this are two, one it's a cool digital portrait, second it would be a sick cosplay screen or a backpack signaling device
First impressions of the board make me think this is something off the shelf from China for portable video players. There’s a lot of unused pads up the top at 7:39 that are likely for external inputs in addition to the buttons provided. Chip on the left is NAND, on the right is 256Mbit of DRAM.
Only a few of the unused pads had a use in this software so far
Dunno why, but my comments keep getting deleted, so I’ll keep it short. zxfelec seems to be the source of these cards. Actions Semiconductors lists them as a customer for the V100 chips, and zxfelec seems to sell or offer information on the V100 chip.
V100 chip itself seems to be a series of MIPS32 chips designed for embedded video products. The only one I can find data on was apparently designed for 3D video/VR headsets, but I’m not certain that refers to the particular V100 chip in this device
youtube auto deletes a lot of comments, then again it saves me from reading a lot of hate so I guess it works half the time haha
@@RinoaL I figured. The original comments had a lot more information on them, they might still be sitting in the moderation tools or whatever, if you were wanting more info. Anyway, good luck repurposing it.
1:03 omg, next business idea, UBO for mailboxes
Lol took me a bit to recognize the cyberpunk scene
Could make a video Name Tag That ends with a QR code ?
I also wonder if it can have a different OS put on it that would allow more functionality?
Its a low power probably 32 bit actions semiconductor chip. I dont think there is much documentation
I suppose reading out the IC with a programmer could be a good step moving forward.
Yeah
looks like a perfect rickrolling device
TH-cam keeps deleting my link to the datasheet of the main soc. It’s called ZXFELEC V100. It’s got a 32 bit mips cpu and integrated video decoders.
You cant post links on youtube. I went through my junk messages tab and allowed some manually though. May have been some of yours in there
Stumbled upon your channel by the youtube gods. loved the video
I love these, i got a bunch from a holiday light company. I hack and reuse them tons of other stuff, like i made an urn, displays for my products, burthday card and a proposal, ill take some too.
But the real question is:
Can it run doom?
I had a crap load of these with a much bigger screen and connected to a raspberry pie to watch films while traveling i am going to make more to sell as i have around 200 of them
In the next episode, see how to turn your junk mail into a gameboy.
Free battery and charger and so much valuable stuff there to hack for other things to charge or store stuff videos,picture frame if good enough so on. Find a cool statu and put this behind it as eyes moving around like there following you.
Got one of them a few years ago.
Thanks to company on twitter with a autopsy of the card :)
Can you put a bigger screen on it so you can watch stuff ,like tablet size ,maby hook DVD player to it
Wow that's nice of them they're mailing you free components that's pretty cool. I guess it's time to desolder any treasure while you still can before they figure out they're just wasting money.
Those would be awesome to embed in Halloween props and decorations!!! I actually wish I got junk mail - I’d have so much fun with these
Make it run Doom!
Make a point with it and show us where it really belongs. Make a video with instructions on how to use a toilet, make the hardware suitable to install under the seat lid. It gives instructions every time the lid is opened.
Also, how does one get themselves on their advertising list :D
Thats amazing, the day i get junk mail like this ill go dumpster dive my neighborhood
Put your own videos on them and send them back to let them know what you think.
(Don't actually cuz it will just be some underpaid person opening the mail that has to put up with it but it's a funny thought)
yeah lol
Friend brought one to me a week ago but it had micro USB in it ;)
Can we use it for ROCKET ENGINE?! 😱😁👍👍🇺🇸
If you go the movie prop direction, make it look like a 2000s action movie prop where it's like, silver and has a lot of extra little swooshes and details like a lot of stuff had back then. Basically what people thought like a futuristic PDA would've been.
>mp3 file
I see some interesting cover artwork there, hmm... lol
I think I can make it out, it's the ty the tasmanian tiger soundtrack? right?
The glue is just hot glue. Spray it down with a bunch of isopropyl alcohol and let it soak in. It will brake down and just crumble off.
Spunky and fresh fly fresh..thank you and happy holidays☺
quick tip, a dab of alcohol breaks the bond of hot glue and it comes right off.
Thanks I didnt know
I don't need any more proof than this to show that our society has got a major E-waste addiction problem... but you know what this just creates a whole new level of free potential to cause all sorts of mischief xD