A vape that runs DOOM? Appears like a fever dream from a tech fanatic’s late night time Reddit scroll, however Aaron Christophel made it actual with the PIXO Aspire, a $35 vaping package that’s greater than only a nicotine supply system. This tiny machine, with its 323×173 pixel touchscreen and Puya PY32F403XC microcontroller based mostly on a Cortex-M4 core, can nearly run DOOM natively.
Vapes are alleged to warmth liquid, produce vapor and perhaps show just a few settings on a display. However the PIXO Aspire exceeds expectations. The Puya microcontroller has sufficient oomph to do complicated duties. With 16 MB of exterior SPI Flash storage and a touchscreen show, the {hardware} screams potential past its meant use. There’s additionally a vibration motor for haptic suggestions and an unused Bluetooth Low-Power chip, so the maker by no means activated some options.
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Working DOOM natively would have been best however one impediment stood in the best way: the Puya chip’s tiny 64 kB of SRAM. DOOM, regardless of its lean design for 1993 PCs, wants extra RAM to deal with graphics, sport logic and sound in actual time. The processor and storage had been sufficient however the SRAM bottleneck prevented a local port. Christophel wasn’t deterred, he got here up with an ingenious resolution: flip the vape into somewhat secondary show for a PC working DOOM.
Christophel needed to write new firmware which is offered on his GitHub site to show the PIXO Aspire right into a screensharing machine. He used the vape’s USB port to connect with a PC and broadcast DOOM’s pictures on the 323×173 pixel touchscreen. A PC companion software shortly grabs the sport’s output, compresses it and sends it to the vape. What’s the consequence? You management DOOM with a mouse and keyboard in your pc and the motion occurs on the vape’s display.
The PIXO Aspire’s firmware is a fortress, with an inside watchdog timer and an exterior {hardware} timer that may reboot the system if one thing goes incorrect. These security options designed to make sure secure vaping had been a significant impediment. Christophel spent hours reverse engineering the system to determine how the timers labored and the best way to forestall them from resetting his customized firmware. He succeeded and the vape is steady and DOOM is working.
What’s subsequent in vape gaming? The PIXO Aspire’s unused Bluetooth chip may theoretically be used for wi-fi streaming and even multiplayer hacks. Future vapes may need extra SRAM and native DOOM ports with out the necessity for a PC. Producers may market gaming vapes to a small, however vocal viewers.
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