New Variable Voltage device from smoktech?

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MickeyRat

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You know... you've made me view things a totally different way with this statement. I like seeing numbers BUT 3 of my devices have wheels and I'm fine with that. I've not really thought of viewing them as "power up" and "power down" before but it makes sense.

I see you have a VV Reo too. I'm very familiar with that wheel considering I have a Buzz Pro and the VV part of the Woodvil is a Buzz Pro. One thing the Woodvil doesn't have that the Buzz Pro does is a three marks on the wheel. There aren't any on the Woodvil. Why is that important? You need to know where it is. You get to where you know about where you like it with the marks and perfect is not going to be far away from that. If it is, you know something's wrong. I'm going to be going by a hobby shop and getting a couple colors of model paint and a fine tip brush to remedy that missing piece soon.

On a mod that is adjusted up and down with buttons, you have to have some kind of display because without it there's no way to tell where you are. However, there's no law that says it has to read voltage. One to thirty would do the job just fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a volume setting of 5 on my TV to be the same as a volume setting of 5 on your TV.

This has been a great discussion so far and I hope it doesn't get into heated name calling or putting down the vmax.. I'd love to try one but like mickey..I'm also trying to absorb my latest purchase so anything new is out of the question right now. (and the vv grands are coming up soon! :D)

Most of the people in this thread have discussed all manner of things in other threads. It's not going to get hairy. Yeah, I might have a hard time explaining to my wife I need a VV Grand after the Woodvil. I'm kind of hoping Rob takes his time. :)
 
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donnah

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I see you have a VV Reo too. I'm very familiar with that wheel considering I have a Buzz Pro and the VV part of the Woodvil is a Buzz Pro. One thing the Woodvil doesn't have that the Buzz Pro does is a three marks on the wheel. There aren't any on the Woodvil. Why is that important? You need to know where it is. You get to where you know about where you like it with the marks and perfect is not going to be far away from that. If it is, you know something's wrong. I'm going to be going by a hobby shop and getting a couple colors of model paint and a fine tip brush to remedy that missing piece soon.

On a mod that is adjusted up and down with buttons, you have to have some kind of display because without it there's no way to tell where you are. However, there's no law that says it has to read voltage. One to thirty would do the job just fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a volume setting of 5 on my TV to be the same as a volume setting of 5 on your TV.



Most of the people in this thread have discussed all manner of things in other threads. It's not going to get hairy. Yeah, I might have a hard time explaining to my wife I need a VV Grand after the Woodvil. I'm kind of hoping Rob takes his time. :)

yea.. there needs to be some sort of "standard". Even my mods with the wheels.. I always put the voltmeter on them to see where I am and to get to where I want to be. I too am planning on putting colors on my woodvil wheel so I can see what's what. There's no telling what the future PVs will be like.

I don't know how hard it will be to convince my husband that I need a vv Grand .. I'm the one who handles the bills and such and as long as the bills get paid and we don't starve, he doesn't question what I buy, so if I buy one, I won't tell him before hand (and it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission!) He rather enjoyed looking at the woodvil and I know that if I can get a Grand in the Steeler's colors he'll be fine with it LOL.. ( I too hope Rob takes his time!)
 
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N rustica

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So what I got about the v-max from the pbusardo review is that you can hold the button to scroll to the voltage and it's unfortunate that you don't have to pull the pin. Doesn't the provari button rattle when you shake it also? He makes no mention that it is covered by a one year warranty like the provari. By leaving important stuff out and going on and on about numbers is disingenuous and not helpful. The tape over the mouth "bit" kind of warns us that he is pandering to the fanboys.

Jeesh, i've been noticing lately that youtube videos were more succint and entertaining when they were limited to 10 minutes. It's kind of weird karma that they are having a glitch today that doesn't allow long videos to be uploaded. I'm at the 16:00 mark and I had to stop on this. It says to skip ahead to 26:00 to hear his summary of using the v-max with one kind of carto. 4:00 minute review, perfect.

 
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skipdashu

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I see you have a VV Reo too. I'm very familiar with that wheel considering I have a Buzz Pro and the VV part of the Woodvil is a Buzz Pro. One thing the Woodvil doesn't have that the Buzz Pro does is a three marks on the wheel. There aren't any on the Woodvil. Why is that important? You need to know where it is. You get to where you know about where you like it with the marks and perfect is not going to be far away from that. If it is, you know something's wrong. I'm going to be going by a hobby shop and getting a couple colors of model paint and a fine tip brush to remedy that missing piece soon.

On a mod that is adjusted up and down with buttons, you have to have some kind of display because without it there's no way to tell where you are. However, there's no law that says it has to read voltage. One to thirty would do the job just fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a volume setting of 5 on my TV to be the same as a volume setting of 5 on your TV.



Most of the people in this thread have discussed all manner of things in other threads. It's not going to get hairy. Yeah, I might have a hard time explaining to my wife I need a VV Grand after the Woodvil. I'm kind of hoping Rob takes his time. :)

Oh I do love dat Rat. We'll said my man. Despite owning a couple 'button & display' devices I do still prefer my ol' Buzz Pro's wheel adjustment.
 

John D in CT

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I guess I'm calling out "The Original Guru" but any difference in battery life is going to come from efficiencies of the conversion circuit. The input voltage (the batteries) isn't changing and to get 9W out you need at least 9W coming out of the battery, regardless of output voltage. This means at 5.0V, 9W on a 3.7 volt VV device, your battery will be dumping at least 2.45A.

I don't understand this. Anyone?

I think I got the main idea, and it brings up some questions I had anyway.

Adami is wondering the same basic thing I was. I think of watts as heat, when used for our vaping purposes. (A slight amount of light as well too, since a coil does glow a little bit. In an incandescent light bulb the combination of heat and light is just more readily observable).

So I think he's basically saying, and IMO pretty correctly, that a PV with a nominal 3.7V battery putting out 9 watts, regardless of the actual voltage setting or coil resistance [well, he used 5 volts at whatever resistance that would happen to me, but that doesn't really affect the essential point] will have its battery flowing out that 9 watts at 3.7 x 3.7 / x = 9 watts at 2.45 amps.

His question [and now mine] is how exactly does this apparent magic occur, that a battery is "less taxed" if its providing x watts to a coil at lower amps as opposed to putting out the same x watts at higher amps?

***

OK, I'm going to leave that as I just typed it, flaws and all. Let's ditch the 3.7 volt device putting out 5 volts and go to an example that I would have used if I had asked the question I was going to ask before adami asked his.

PV with 8.4 volts available to it, regulated to 7.4 volts, asuuming no voltage drop for simplicity.

Powering a 4 ohm single coil at 6 volts its providing 9 watts to the coil, at 1.5 amps.

Powering a 2 ohm single coil at 4.24 volts its providing 9 watts to the coil at 2.12 amps.

Since it would seem to be a free physics lunch, why is it easier for the battery to provide what appears would be the same amount of "heat", 9 watts, to the coil just because the amperage is lower?

And I kindly ask for a gentle reply, no matter who gives it. I would like some credit for hereby admitting that I'm unclear on something. (I know, OMG!) :)

***

Additional details relating to this same question, different application:

I have a 25HP 3-phase air compressor. At 230 volts, it draws 63 amps. At 460 volts, it would draw half of that, 31.5 amps, and smaller wire could be used. Why could smaller wire be used when it seems that the electric motor would be consuming the same overall amount of energy (total watts) to do its job?
 
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adami

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Since it would seem to be a free physics lunch, why is it easier for the battery to provide what appears would be the same amount of "heat", 9 watts, to the coil just because the amperage is lower?

The numbers I used came from fuzzione's quote out of laziness. I firmly don't believe there's a free lunch and that this is a misunderstanding that's propagated from the days when variable voltage was uncommon and high voltage meant stacked batteries. I suspect that for constant wattage the Provari gets best battery life between 3.0-4.2V and the VMax will see best battery life operating at 6.0-7.4V (I forget its top voltage) based on the assumption that the converter should be most efficient closest to the battery's actual voltage.
 
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John D in CT

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The numbers I used came from fuzzione's quote out of laziness. I firmly don't believe there's ["not" deleted]a free lunch and that this is a misunderstanding that's propagated from the days when variable voltage was uncommon and high voltage meant stacked batteries. I suspect that for constant wattage the Provari gets best battery life between 3.0-4.2V and the VMax will see best battery life operating at 6.0-7.4V (I forget its top voltage) based on the assumption that the converter should be most efficient closest to the battery's actual voltage.

None of that was directed at you or intended to be critical in any way; I wasn't implying that you were saying there was a "free lunch" involved; those were my words. But I do have to ask if there's an unintentional "double negative" in the bolded text. [There was.] I'm leaning toward firmly believing that there is not a free lunch, especially in physics.

***

And is it my imagination, or do I hear the sound of heads exploding? I sure hope so. :)

(And where the hell is VAP?)

***

Update: From the "TMI" and "Funny Coincidence" files (since we were just talking about Phil Busardo) - I just had to "pull my post" when I switched a tank from my Woo to my eGo LOL!
 
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adami

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None of that was directed at you or intended to be critical in any way; I wasn't implying that you were saying there was a "free lunch" involved; those were my words. But I do have to ask if there's an unintentional "double negative" in the bolded text. I'm leaning toward firmly believing that there is not a free lunch, especially in physics.

***

And is it my imagination, or do I hear the sound of heads exploding? I sure hope so. :)

(And where the hell is VAP?)

Er, yeah, that was a mistake. Not to go all Heinlein up in heahhh, but TANSTAAFL ;)

e: And I suck at conveying that I'm not taking it personally, I didn't think you were putting words in my mouth
 
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MickeyRat

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I think I got the main idea, and it brings up some questions I had anyway.

Adami is wondering the same basic thing I was. I think of watts as heat, when used for our vaping purposes. (A slight amount of light as well too, since a coil does glow a little bit. In an incandescent light bulb the combination of heat and light is just more readily observable).

So I think he's basically saying, and IMO pretty correctly, that a PV with a nominal 3.7V battery putting out 9 watts, regardless of the actual voltage setting or coil resistance [well, he used 5 volts at whatever resistance that would happen to me, but that doesn't really affect the essential point] will have its battery flowing out that 9 watts at 3.7 x 3.7 / x = 9 watts at 2.45 amps.

His question [and now mine] is how exactly does this apparent magic occur, that a battery is "less taxed" if its providing x watts to a coil at lower amps as opposed to putting out the same x watts at higher amps?

Here's an analogy that might help. Think of voltage as pressure and amps as GPM (Gallons Per Minute). Your batteries are analogous to a tank of water. If you run high pressure water out of the tank at lower GPM, it'll take longer to drain the tank than if you run low pressure at higher GPM. The pressure*GPM might be the same in both cases but, the lower pressure case drains the tank faster. That's the way it works.
 

440BB

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Holy crap, I think my head just exploded!

I'm just going to slap a 3 ohm Boge on mine when it arrives and see how it vapes at the default. If it's too hot, I will dial it down a little.

I do wish there was an optional knob with settings I could more easily understand. For example:

spinaltap-11.jpg
 

skipdashu

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I'm still not crystal-clear on why a battery is happier putting out fewer amps if the same number of watts are being drawn, but maybe someone can help me out with that.

Think of it like this... You're building a pyramid in the Egyptian desert. It's hot. You get to volunteer to be on one of two teams of 3 people. One team gets to move two 500 pound blocks 500 feet (in two trips). The other team gets to move one 1000 pound block 500 feet (obviously in one trip). Which team do you volunteer for and why? Answers must be 25 words minimum, 50 words maximum.
 
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John D in CT

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Here's an analogy that might help. Think of voltage as pressure and amps as GPM (Gallons Per Minute). Your batteries are analogous to a tank of water. If you run high pressure water out of the tank at lower GPM, it'll take longer to drain the tank than if you run low pressure at higher GPM. The pressure*GPM might be the same in both cases but, the lower pressure case drains the tank faster. That's the way it works.

So far so go, as far as your (excellent) replies goes .. but I think I'm still looking for more. I do think of volts as pressure, as I think I've alluded to in some previous posts about why I think it's easier for a dual-battery VV APV to deliver say, 6 volts than it is for a single-battery one (Naming no names LOL). I have explained it exactly that way to friends.

"Imagine that this (nominal) 7.4 volt device is a garden hose with 74 PSI of water pressure, and it has to deliver a stream of water at 60 PSI. It'll say, 'no problem, I got that on me', and will deliver it as fast as it can, given the constraints of friction, pipe diameters, hose length, etc. A hose that has 37 PSI cal also generate 60 PSI, if the 37 PSI encounters sufficient resistance somewhere along the way. Inside a sprinkler, perhaps", or words to the effect.

Consider this though; in your analogy, the GPM varied. Would not "watts used/delivered" be the equivalent of "GPM"? When GPM remains the same, or when watts remain the same, what is the inherent advantage ... OK, abandoning the water imagery now ... what is the inherent advantage to a storage battery in delivering X number of watts at a higher "pressure"/voltage than the same number of watts at a lower "pressure"/voltage?

And again, why does my compressor need only, say, 3 x 10 gauge wires to run at 460 volts but 3 x 6 gauge (heavier/thicker than 10 gauge, to not confuse those unfamiliar with wire gauges) when doing the same amount of work (total watts consumed remain the same)?

I suppose, thinking out loud, that you could use a skinnier hose to deliver the same GPM as a fatter hose to deliver a given GPM, and a thinner wire to deliver the same number of watts as a thicker wire to deliever the same amount of watts, since the voltage (pressure) is higher. But bringing it back to batteries, why is it "easier" on a battery to give X number of watts at higher volts ("pressure") than at lower volts?

I'm still missing something on why the lower amps arrived at with higher voltage helps the battery do its job if watts (GPM) stay the same regardless of what amperage it's delivered at.

***

Analogy glossary:

Volts = water pressure
Amps = gallons per minute flowing through the water conduit?
Watts = what? Total amount of water coming out of the sprinkler at any given moment?

I need a drink; that, or pull my post again. Or both, in no particular order.
 
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