When Low SRAM Keeps the DOOM off Your Vape
The PIXO Aspire is a roughly $35 USD vape that can almost play DOOM, with [Aaron Christophel] finding that the only thing that realistically stops it from doing so is that the Cortex-M4-based Puya PY32F403XC MCU only has 64 kB of SRAM. CPU-wise it would be more than capable, with a roomy 16 MB of external SPI Flash and a 323×173 pixel LC touch screen display covering the other needs. It even has a vibration motor to give you some force feedback. Interestingly, this vape has a Bluetooth Low-Energy chip built-in, but this does not seem to be used by the original Aspire firmware.
What [Aaron] did to still get some DOOM vapors on the device was to implement a screenshare firmware, allowing a PC to use the device as a secondary display via its USB interface. This way you can use the regular PC mouse and keyboard inputs to play DOOM, while squinting at the small screen.
Although not as completely overpowered as a recent Anker charging station that [Aaron] played DOOM on, we fully expect vapes in a few years to be perfectly usable for some casual gaming, with this potentially even becoming an original manufacturer’s function, if it isn’t already.
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