Discontinued The Grasshopper
- Thread starter midgetsanchez
- Start date
Vaporific
All who wander are not lost...
I would think unfulfilled orders will be addressed soon as long as it’s brought to their attention, not including this forum. Email them or inquire within their website once logged in. It however may take time for them to respond given the current circumstances.
FWIW my RMA was logged as received 3 weeks after USPS confirmed it arrived, so their fulfillment status updates were not timely and accurate - and perhaps prematurely reverse in these cases (TBD). Good luck!
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Old_muel
Well-Known Member
What's it mean again when during a toke, lights start flashing red, blue, red, blue etc & heat stops? That's the 15 or however many second timeout yeah? Well mine's doing that crap sometimes way before it's meant to, sometimes after about 5 seconds, before I've even got a satisfactory hit yet, is this an old hopper problem or something new?
Was clearing chambers in 2 monsterous rips last week when i first got it back, sometimes even 1 through water, now it's like 4 or so mediocre ones most times due to the damn thing timing out on me. *Sigh*
Edit; Cleaned the backend threads & now getting normal performance again, plus no flickering where there was some before, also barely any backend heat where there was more before.
Keep ya threads clean!!! A 510 hopper heater would be pretty damn sweet, it would eliminate this sort of finickyness caused by using the body as an electrical path
Was clearing chambers in 2 monsterous rips last week when i first got it back, sometimes even 1 through water, now it's like 4 or so mediocre ones most times due to the damn thing timing out on me. *Sigh*
Edit; Cleaned the backend threads & now getting normal performance again, plus no flickering where there was some before, also barely any backend heat where there was more before.
Keep ya threads clean!!! A 510 hopper heater would be pretty damn sweet, it would eliminate this sort of finickyness caused by using the body as an electrical path
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Works fine for most LED torches and battery mods, don't know why it is a problem with h Hopper, body material maybe?
Hammahead
Well-Known Member
Most LED torches don't drain 10-12A thru such a tiny body.
J.D.420
420th Dragoons
Hopper gang for life. Stainless steel backer edition on left still going strong. 2019 Ti on the right. The improvements between the two versions are amazing. Was really sad to hear about the fire. Glad everyone is ok and I hope you guys can continue making amazing vapes. Just wanted to chime in to show some love to the hopper labs folks
Hopper gang for life. Stainless steel backer edition on left still going strong. 2019 Ti on the right. The improvements between the two versions are amazing. Was really sad to hear about the fire. Glad everyone is ok and I hope you guys can continue making amazing vapes. Just wanted to chime in to show some love to the hopper labs folks
Finally some positive words...
How can you tell what generation you have? Is there a way to tell with serial number on unit or box?
J.D.420
420th Dragoons
I’m not sure just going by the year I got both units. Backer version was from 2016 during the original indiegogo campaign so you know I’m an OG lol
vapviking
Old & In the Way
This is remarkable, are you saying the 2016 has not needed any repair since new? And you've been using it? Bravo!
In 2016, I gave my daughter a brand new SS from pre-order and it stopped working in week 2 but she's yet to send it in. I guess now it will be in the time capsule (her closet) a while longer.
Terpenetime
Well-Known Member
J.D.420
420th Dragoons
It's awesome it feels really well made and fits the hopper snugly. It protects the hopper from scratches and accidental activation when its in your pocket. Also helps control odor. Get one you won't regret it
What can I say I'm one of the lucky ones hehe. Mine must have been personally assembled by one of the engineers or something cause it works fine.
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NOLOGO
Well-Known Member
not trying to be contradictory, but the leather case doesn't protect from accidental activation, as the button top is still exposed. (The "metal to backend" short thing can still happen also, where the unit is tricked into turning on briefly when metal touches the backend and body simultaneously.)
Vaporific
All who wander are not lost...
I have the latest leather sleeve after having the first gen version. I like the current version which is a bit bigger and the clip can fit inside (the original version was too narrow and the clip fit on the outside). What else can I say about it? It’s great to protect the Hopper and fits in any pocket.
I also bought the leather case from Ratchett @ Delta3DStudios which, again, is fantastic and I use this most of the time (you gotta have extra batts and doob tube or vial, and a brush). I’ve had both for a few years and they’re holding up all too well - and I’ve never conditioned either, yet but soon. They’re both great and I recommend both.
MonkeyTime
Well-Known Member
Without knowing your history, I don't believe there is one unfortunately.
NOLOGO
Well-Known Member
oh, my mistake. Didn't realize they made other versions.I have the latest leather sleeve after having the first gen version. I like the current version which is a bit bigger and the clip can fit inside (the original version was too narrow and the clip fit on the outside). What else can I say about it? It’s great to protect the Hopper and fits in any pocket.
I also bought the leather case from Ratchett @ Delta3DStudios which, again, is fantastic and I use this most of the time (you gotta have extra batts and doob tube or vial, and a brush). I’ve had both for a few years and they’re holding up all too well - and I’ve never conditioned either, yet but soon. They’re both great and I recommend both.
MoltenTiger
Well-Known Member
There are many differences between different age units, looking into the battery chamber or the herb chamber will reveal some of these. The herb chamber began with a blue heater shield with exposed sensor, this is the era of the cop lights and high failure rate.
This 3rd party heater assembly iterated until it was a white shield, with updated sensor, and with an extra mesh screen placed on top of the heater shield. The yield was questionable, some worked amazingly, many crapped out.
I guess ‘V5’ is really a reference to in-house printed heater assemblies. These front body assemblies are what most will get back from RMA and (apart from this recent fire) is what everyone has been waiting on, as production has been limited by HL acquiring and learning the laser sintering manufacturing tech. ‘V5’ or some modern variant is basically what new units will ship with. These have a white (ceramic?) heater shield and no exposed sensor component, and again are covered with the SS laser cut and scratch-proof screen seen in the base of the herb chamber. I haven’t had one of these HL heaters fail on me, for the record. In 2017 the 3rd party heaters were commonly failing after 0-3 weeks of heavy or even light use, and they often ran cold or gave up mid toke. This is largely the cause of the varied user experience. I’m fast approaching 2 years out of my first HL heater with very consistent foolproof usage. I’ve clocked up 10 months on two others, one is lent to someone who has a unit stuck at HL, they went to confirm their return address for a 2018 RMA the day of the fire notice! He said the one on lend is still pumping out clouds. I have no use for so many working units, two is a good number however. And with them, I have no use for any other portable and I’ll be downsizing my collection soon I think. Things should be used and have use.
Anyway, with the hopper, the complexity of the back end and the number of contacts where high current is pushed is the cause of other performance idiosyncrasies such as back-end heat, stuttering LEDs or other continuity issues. Keep the exposed contacts clean and batteries charged to maintain performance. I rarely need to clean PFEs, overall this is so simple to maintain.
My latest unit, bought at a whopping 35% off during 4/20 sales 2018, has an updated PCB with quality components (dual crystals, quality caps and a mosfet exposed). My RMA units are patch fixed and still retain older aspects of the design which doesn’t really impact anything, it just takes a couple of clicks to power it up after it auto shuts down. The latest back-end has improved circuitry too. The two crystals on the heater assemblies PCB stand out as they have reflective/shiny metallic packages compared to the older style, sometimes hand built and eventually CNC pick and placed boards. The solder screening is a typical green, so other than the components and schematics it all looks pretty tiny and similar, but lots has changed, test points introduced (one then two) other things added, removed, moved and tweaked. Quite sure no wave soldering is used in production, this is a through hole component soldering method and it seems like HL only has TH parts in the heater assembly, on Instagram they show a matrix of assemblies that are CNC automagically soldered.
Basically things have massively improved on the electrical design over the years, the design and BOM are better and with the added automation so is the QA. You can see how the first units were hand baked under a hot air gun on-top of a burnt bit of wood in the video recently linked here profiling HL in their old workshop from the indiegogo days. People often chirp up about how nothing has changed with HL, but they are patently wrong. There has been leaps and bounds of incremental improvement that adds together and transforms this product. I’ve said before that the difference between my backer unit and my 2018 retail release was a big one, and it was nice to read someone else appreciate this @J.D.420. It is genuinely amazing. For their first wave of design I’ve always considered this as the ‘iPod’ standard of vape design. Apple had a huge team (two competing actually), Foxconn and a shit tonne of cash to get that right from the get go, and made the smart move of keeping R1 from international sales as they did with the iPhone. FireWire and a mechanical scroll wheel, the design elements changed a bit, but the functionality was consistent. HL didn’t have a Newton to learn from, they’ve gone straight in with the functionality and golden design standards. They’ve brought the buttons onto the now capacitive scroll wheel, and then they catch fire. Unlike the iPod, which now that mobile computing has taken over, it makes sense to neglect a dedicated device, a vaporiser is staple. I don’t want to vape from my phone or next gen VR glasses. Vaping makes the cloud and it can’t be a cloud like music streaming. It’s taking time, but there are too few alternatives that vaporise as I want and many examples of the antithesis
The external design hasn’t changed all too much with the Grasshopper, but the very early units had some mechanical differences to the back-end. After laser welding was obtained the SS section of the Ti hopper (under the dial and connecting the clip) changed to a solid ring design which is much stronger and is still the current design.
the OG design was flawed in several ways.
Eventually a brand new Hopper will be the safe bet that everyone needs. But because it’s modular with a generous warranty, existing units should become that to the same extent. The only thing that would really change this Grasshopper conundrum is if someone like a Google or Samesung come along and rip it off, but it won’t happen in today’s climate. And as for a dedicated music player, the DAC in an iPod touch outclasses anything in-device from anyone but LG. The GH will still be vapor bonging at my house and national parks!
The Tinymight could be the next best thing, but the Hopper Labs heater is special and vapophiles will tell. The eventually thing is definitely dragging on, but so is the release of anything else good.
@MoltenTiger, thank you so much! That was so informative. One of the best responses I ever got, love this forum awesome! I know its hard guys but we gotta keep the faith for hopper labs. Let's hope they come back stronger than ever after this.
eideal852
Well-Known Member
Well holy shit. I’ve never seen anything so comprehensive, at least this concisely, regarding design iterations, etc...There are many differences between different age units, looking into the battery chamber or the herb chamber will reveal some of these. The herb chamber began with a blue heater shield with exposed sensor, this is the era of the cop lights and high failure rate.
This 3rd party heater assembly iterated until it was a white shield, with updated sensor, and with an extra mesh screen placed on top of the heater shield. The yield was questionable, some worked amazingly, many crapped out.
I guess ‘V5’ is really a reference to in-house printed heater assemblies. These front body assemblies are what most will get back from RMA and (apart from this recent fire) is what everyone has been waiting on, as production has been limited by HL acquiring and learning the laser sintering manufacturing tech. ‘V5’ or some modern variant is basically what new units will ship with. These have a white (ceramic?) heater shield and no exposed sensor component, and again are covered with the SS laser cut and scratch-proof screen seen in the base of the herb chamber. I haven’t had one of these HL heaters fail on me, for the record. In 2017 the 3rd party heaters were commonly failing after 0-3 weeks of heavy or even light use, and they often ran cold or gave up mid toke. This is largely the cause of the varied user experience. I’m fast approaching 2 years out of my first HL heater with very consistent foolproof usage. I’ve clocked up 10 months on two others, one is lent to someone who has a unit stuck at HL, they went to confirm their return address for a 2018 RMA the day of the fire notice! He said the one on lend is still pumping out clouds. I have no use for so many working units, two is a good number however. And with them, I have no use for any other portable and I’ll be downsizing my collection soon I think. Things should be used and have use.
Anyway, with the hopper, the complexity of the back end and the number of contacts where high current is pushed is the cause of other performance idiosyncrasies such as back-end heat, stuttering LEDs or other continuity issues. Keep the exposed contacts clean and batteries charged to maintain performance. I rarely need to clean PFEs, overall this is so simple to maintain.
My latest unit, bought at a whopping 35% off during 4/20 sales 2018, has an updated PCB with quality components (dual crystals, quality caps and a mosfet exposed). My RMA units are patch fixed and still retain older aspects of the design which doesn’t really impact anything, it just takes a couple of clicks to power it up after it auto shuts down. The latest back-end has improved circuitry too. The two crystals on the heater assemblies PCB stand out as they have reflective/shiny metallic packages compared to the older style, sometimes hand built and eventually CNC pick and placed boards. The solder screening is a typical green, so other than the components and schematics it all looks pretty tiny and similar, but lots has changed, test points introduced (one then two) other things added, removed, moved and tweaked. Quite sure no wave soldering is used in production, this is a through hole component soldering method and it seems like HL only has TH parts in the heater assembly, on Instagram they show a matrix of assemblies that are CNC automagically soldered.
Basically things have massively improved on the electrical design over the years, the design and BOM are better and with the added automation so is the QA. You can see how the first units were hand baked under a hot air gun on-top of a burnt bit of wood in the video recently linked here profiling HL in their old workshop from the indiegogo days. People often chirp up about how nothing has changed with HL, but they are patently wrong. There has been leaps and bounds of incremental improvement that adds together and transforms this product. I’ve said before that the difference between my backer unit and my 2018 retail release was a big one, and it was nice to read someone else appreciate this @J.D.420. It is genuinely amazing. For their first wave of design I’ve always considered this as the ‘iPod’ standard of vape design. Apple had a huge team (two competing actually), Foxconn and a shit tonne of cash to get that right from the get go, and made the smart move of keeping R1 from international sales as they did with the iPhone. FireWire and a mechanical scroll wheel, the design elements changed a bit, but the functionality was consistent. HL didn’t have a Newton to learn from, they’ve gone straight in with the functionality and golden design standards. They’ve brought the buttons onto the now capacitive scroll wheel, and then they catch fire. Unlike the iPod, which now that mobile computing has taken over, it makes sense to neglect a dedicated device, a vaporiser is staple. I don’t want to vape from my phone or next gen VR glasses. Vaping makes the cloud and it can’t be a cloud like music streaming. It’s taking time, but there are too few alternatives that vaporise as I want and many examples of the antithesis
The external design hasn’t changed all too much with the Grasshopper, but the very early units had some mechanical differences to the back-end. After laser welding was obtained the SS section of the Ti hopper (under the dial and connecting the clip) changed to a solid ring design which is much stronger and is still the current design.
the OG design was flawed in several ways.
Eventually a brand new Hopper will be the safe bet that everyone needs. But because it’s modular with a generous warranty, existing units should become that to the same extent. The only thing that would really change this Grasshopper conundrum is if someone like a Google or Samesung come along and rip it off, but it won’t happen in today’s climate. And as for a dedicated music player, the DAC in an iPod touch outclasses anything in-device from anyone but LG. The GH will still be vapor bonging at my house and national parks!
The Tinymight could be the next best thing, but the Hopper Labs heater is special and vapophiles will tell. The eventually thing is definitely dragging on, but so is the release of anything else good.
are you in the loop at all? Or just customer-side og? Obvious point: I would have had a hard on reading this last week waiting for my unit, but after getting a “shipping” notice the day before the fire, and zero activity or response on case or email front, now not so much
MoltenTiger
Well-Known Member
Yeah I've been following this since 2015 with keen interest. Back then I was wanting to design an induction based vaporiser, but didn't really know what I was doing. I had just started to quit smoking and the Arizer EQ was my daily driver. I was impressed by that thing, and similar to Matt, Trevor and Conrad, could see it's flaws and wanted something without any issue that was tailored more to my usage which is basically 100% heavy combustion bong replacement. I knew of the Sublimator back then but it was so expensive I could never justify it. Some Aussie guys in WA who make the OZenail were prototyping some similar gear, but I was stuck down here in Tassie fighting tobacco addiction by myself. I kept studying and toking and sketching and trying to figure something out, it's so hard down here to this day to do anything in this industry especially solo, and innovation is a random thing from the ethos. I knew of the GH from when it was being crowd funded but the general consensus was that everything they said it would do was straight up bullshit and impossible (not far from the truth as it turns out, but also ZenPen weren't lying either, the concept really delivered). After a long time, people actually started to receive Grasshoppers (rare to get anything out of Indiegogo!) The Vaporizer Wizard got one and made a video proving that the concept was for real and the naysayers were just pessimistic (but righteously).
I considered all the concepts I had seen or come up with and the difficulty of trying to squeeze basically a stove top into a small vape. And I watched that video of a production hopper, and just realised that the Grasshopper had completely outdone itself and shamed my ideas. It hit the nail on the head, the size and functionality will never be repeated until someone with real money and magic shares this interest and the marketeering is less risky and more assured of return of investment. Once the banks are on board I guess.
HL have been more transparent than any other company I've ever dealt with. I've never really felt left in the dark and they have disclosed perhaps more than I would to simple customers from my experiences with product design and production - but being crowd funded is definitely different to the norm. All the info and the chronology are consistent with unfortunate awesomeness. Great things simply take time.
This fire caused the first 'HL goss' to reach me via SMS (my friend was probably in your same RMA batch). It was a shaky aftermath since the notice, and I wasn't sure what to think.
Trevor's quick run down here put it in perspective, initially it really seemed worse, like that could be it for the hopper, but these people have obtained an amazing idea. They deserve their monopoly and should be proud of what they have achieved so far. I've never got the sense of accomplishment from anyone badmouthing them - lots of great insight and not to badmouth anyone, but it is incredible that HL still exists and the only reason is because they are like us. Enthusiasts who just don't know where to stop. And they just shouldn't stop. Their passion is awesome and inspiring. What they have created is so cool.
This is a product, this is a throwaway tech item that has been designed with that in mind with an attempt to mitigate that reality, this is a product that has improved my health, my lifestyle, and actually my overall happiness due to its simple delivery of sacred medicine. I think it's a huge deal and I'm getting a little tired of being the odd one out. We all just want the hiccups to stop, hopefully in 2020 HL can catch a break. The hopper was practically ahead of its time, but if I'm sure of one thing, it's that slowly time is catching up, and as it does, the benefit of a device like this becomes more and more relevant.
Being on the forefront of HL processes can be frustrating as it's still early adoption (it's not early adoption when an iteration is consistently produced and it sounds like V6 was due out next month, things were and are still developing - this is how they set up shop and how they are situated in the hardware industry). They've had many known faults being shipped, it goes like this - you need to make sales to get funds, you need to have funds to fix repetitive issues, and you need a damn lot of sales and funds and time to fix the Grasshopper as it was released initially. They've been addressing things one at a time to some extent, it's all that was possible, and so only more recently have they been selling something that isn't knowingly going to break in an ordinary service period. Owning a long lasting hopper is end game, and is worth the wait.
I've only had one toke out of many thousand from the hopper I didn't enjoy - moldy buds! Gross! (Not my stash, new city, neighbours got it from some seedy Bikie).
Those other times are plentiful and beyond brilliant though. If I take enough days off and put some A grade in it can pretty much bring me to tears it's so good. Business as usual isn't bad either, I just don't find myself crying unless it stops working - but last time I faced that was Nov 2017 and 2 years without a problem is all I wanted from the GH over the Mighty. How lame is it that the Crafty+ doesn't even have user swappable batteries. People get annoyed at their hoppers failing and not meeting their outlandish expectations. I get annoyed at shit like the MV1, 15 second timer, 60USD custom batteries which take a day to charge, and an App removed from the appstore due to petty violations. Not to mention the dyed siloxane.
At least you'll be next in line for a properly powerful ultra portable @eideal852
No one else is making that happen, that's the worst aspect of this saga IMO. The innovations is done, it doesn't require much thinking to build on that. But let's talk about cells without consideration of power and wind metal around a rod. Let's watch every product release completely neglect insulation and the dynamic at hand.
If I was limited to that level of development I would still be smoking without any doubt (or perhaps have some custom solutions). I need power and I need it immediately and that's exactly what I have every evening and day off. As soon as everyone has that, there is nothing left to do but enjoy strains and get red eyed.
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vapviking
Old & In the Way
More awesome than ever, @MoltenTiger has come through in biblical fashion.
These two posts should be canonized, and not just posts #24318 & #24321 on page 973.
They should hang on the wall at the new HL office.
Note; I've had to truncate the two quotes in this post (over the character limit!)
Hammahead
Well-Known Member
Also in the latest version the button is imho only barely protected against activation by mistake. Not as easily as in the first, but still...
eideal852
Well-Known Member
@MoltenTiger: alright alright, maybe "concise" is the wrong descriptor, but still,
I appreciate the insight, thanks for the info.
I appreciate the insight, thanks for the info.