(SOUNDBITE OF VAPE SYNTHESIZER)
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Is that an MRI machine, a happy little robot, a Pokemon? (Laughter) Is my radio broken?
KARI LOVE: It is an electronic synthesizer built out of a disposable vape. It is a novelty instrument of sorts.
RASCOE: That's Kari Love, a robotics professor at New York University. And, yes, by vape she means the small plastic battery-powered e-cigarette.
LOVE: It sounds like a kazoo, maybe. And it is played by sucking rather than blowing.
RASCOE: Millions of disposable vapes are sold in the United States every month. Love and her two colleagues, David Rios and Shuang Cai came up with this project called Vape Synth. Now, instead of inhaling nicotine - which is terrible for you - you can make music and recycle at the same time.
LOVE: We were really hoping to highlight both that vapes are kind of this insidious source of e-waste because they are used for the nicotine, but once it runs out, you still have all of these electronics.
RASCOE: First, the researchers had to take apart the vape carefully, since there's a lot going on underneath that sleek casing, says David Rios.
DAVID RIOS: So what's in there is a low-pressure airflow sensor, a charging circuit for the lithium battery, the lithium battery and a heating element.
RASCOE: Then they repurpose the vape's battery and hardware.
RIOS: You have a battery that's already connected to a charger, and you have this sensor that will turn the heating element on and off. So essentially, we're just replacing the heating element with this oscillator music circuit.
RASCOE: For those curious to learn more, they've put a step-by-step guide on instructables.com. Currently, Love and Rios have created two different models of the vape synth.
RIOS: So one is also light-dependent, and one is not.
RASCOE: Here's David Rios playing the one with buttons tuned to specific pitches.
(SOUNDBITE OF VAPE SYNTHESIZER)
RIOS: In both cases, you can control the pitch. It's just one is dependent on how much light is in the room.
RASCOE: Now, the musical stylings of Kari Love.
RIOS: Most light would be like this.
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LOVE: And then you could back it slowly away and have less light.
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RASCOE: And if there's no light in the room, it won't work at all.
LOVE: I was trying to demonstrate it in a bar, and I was like, oh, no, it's broken. And then I remembered, oh, no, bars are just dark.
RIOS: Yeah.
LOVE: So I had to shine a phone flashlight on it.
RASCOE: If you're not loving the vape synth sound, don't worry about it.
LOVE: I would say the music is kind of secondary to what our original purposes were.
RASCOE: Other tinkerers have found even more uses for old vapes - transforming them into cameras and mini microphones. Researchers Kari Love, David Rios and Shuang Cai call it upstream recycling.
LOVE: As things kind of go through their life cycle, they're going downstream towards garbage. And this intervention that we're trying to do is take an opportunity to move these objects back up the stream into usefulness again.
RASCOE: Hear me out, add it to the elementary school curriculum. It could be a hybrid health - don't smoke, kids - and robotics class. And I definitely wouldn't mind if you replace my kids' recorders with the vape synth, as long as they can play "Hot Cross Buns."
(SOUNDBITE OF VAPE SYNTHESIZER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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