Ez-Mix is a new free DIY mixing calculator for creating e-liquid recipes. It has been designed for ease of use, yet has many advanced features essential for accurate and error-free mixing.

• Easy to use.
• Caters for both PG and VG Nic bases or PG-VG hybrids.
• Easily modify an existing mix to change Nic level and/or PG-VG ratio.
• Handles up to 8 flavours, each with their own PG-VG or water/alcohol bases.
• Scratchpad for making notes about the mix.
• Calculates the cost of a mix (optional).
• Extensive error checking.
• Status of Costs and Volumes for confidence that all is OK.
• Flexible printing options.
• Extensive Help and mixing advice.

More and more cigarette smokers are converting to the much less harmful electronic alternative to get their nicotine ‘fix’. Known as ‘vaping’, as opposed to ‘smoking’, there are a variety of PV (Personal Vaporizer) products that are available to achieve this. They range from ‘cigalike’ devices to advanced ‘Tank’ models, and specialised rebuildable models (known as ‘Mods’).

The thing they all have in common is the liquid (known as ‘e-liquid’ or ‘juice’) that provides the nicotine, flavour, and vapour. This liquid is available commercially in a wide variety of flavours and nicotine strengths, but many seasoned vapers are turning to producing their own (referred to as ‘DIY’) from base ingredients, easily obtainable on-line and from pharmacies. Doing this can reduce the cost by as much as a factor of five, and provides unlimited scope for experimenting with new flavours, nicotine strengths, and glycol ratios.

If you are a vaper, and have resisted mixing your own juice for what ever reason, then think again. It is very easy to do, and the equipment you need is very simple and cheap to buy. An adequate setup would cost less than £2 (approx $3). It is also fun and very rewarding, takes little time to do, and will save you lots of money. There is a section in the Ez-Mix help file containing mixing advice which could be useful for beginners, or those who wanted to know more about the subject. There is an on-line version of this help file which you can see by clicking HERE.

Very simple recipes can be estimated fairly easily without any assistance, but as soon as glycol-ratios and additives are included, the calculation becomes intricate. That is where dedicated mixing calculators like Ez-Mix are essential.      

To cater for computer monitors of various resolutions, the main screen is available in two formats - Portrait and Landscape (default), and it is possible to switch between these two from within the program. (If the monitor is less than 800 pixels high, then only Landscape is available). Which format is used is up to the user, and may be dictated by the way they like to work, and how many Ez-Mix screens are open at any one time on the desktop. The height of the Landscape format has been specially chosen to allow use with Netbook computers, which generally have screens only 600 pixels high

There is a useful ‘Notes’ facility for adding comments about the mix - this can be used whilst formulating the mix, or added later after physically performing it and having sampled the result. These notes are stored along with the recipe when the mix is saved.

A recent addition to Ez-Mix is the ability to remix existing liquids, changing the nicotine strength and/or the PG/VG ratio very easily. Checks are made to make sure the new mix is possible, and advice given if not.

Printing options are very flexible, and it is easy to adjust the output to fit anything from small index-cards to full size paper. There is a Print Preview screen that allows adjustments to be made, and accurately preview the output on the chosen paper.

To download Ez-Mix, click on the button below

For full information click here to view an on-line version of the Ez-Mix Help file

Reviews

Before it was released, Ez-Mix was previewed and tested by a focus-group comprised of  over 80 volunteers from a leading vapers forum. Here’s a selection of their comments -

• Very very nice...
• Bl––y AWESOME!!!
• Great job Jeff!!!
• I REALLY like your calculator!
• Excellent work!!
• I don't just "like" your calculator.. I LOVE your calculator.
• You have a beautiful start to a beautiful calculator here!!!
• This is awesome!!! I absolutely love it.
• It looks bl––y great, best I've seen by far.
• Very impressive calculator.
• I think you have done a brilliant job with this!
• I really like using this calculator... works like a charm
• Ran it through its paces. Gotta say, its solid, didn’t run across any anomalies.
• The best calculator I have ever seen cant blieve its free

Operating System Compatibility.

The program was written to be compatible with all MS operating systems from Win98 onward. To date it has been tested on XP, Vista, Win7, and Win8.

Ez-mix does not require any add-ons (such as MS .net) to run, which means it aught to work on any non-MS systems if the required facilities such as Wine are installed to enable Windows programs to be run.

The Focus Group tried this out on Linux and Mac OSX. Linux with Wine worked perfectly, but Mac systems were more problematic. It seems that Mac systems need to be Intel-based to stand a chance, but even then, no-one was successful using Wine or WineBottler. The reason for this is not understood. There appeared to be no problem with Macs using VM (virtual Machines) like Parallels, but this is a costly option. If you have a Mac, and are using a VM, then you should find Ez-Mix runs perfectly. It is still worth trying out the Wine approach again if you are a Mac user, you may have success. If you do, please contact me, and I will add your solution to this page.

It looks really good, but why is it Free - are there any hidden catches?

No, there is nothing of that nature in any of my software. It has also been thoroughly virus checked using MS Security Essentials.

Although I do write and sell shareware, Ez-Mix is free because…

Four years ago I gave up smoking. I was a heavy smoker - 50/60 per day, and it took a lot of willpower to give up. I gained some respite by using NRT products (Patches, Gum, Inhalators, Lozenges etc.), but these were not particularly successful and I became dependent on them, and they were costing me a fortune (why are these things so expensive?).

Then I discovered the gentle art of vaping and it literally changed my life, and I was happy again. I immediately gave up the NRT, and enjoyed the new freedom of vaping virtually anywhere - particularly at work, where my productivity increased dramatically.

About 6 months ago I started mixing my own juice - out of curiosity mainly, but I soon realised the cost benefit. I tried using various DIY calculators which, in the main, worked OK, but I found lacking in the aesthetics department. So, being a professional programmer, I decided to write myself one of my own, which ticked all my boxes. Over time I embellished and improved it and, after showing it to a fellow vaper who immediately wanted a copy, I realised it may be useful to a wider audience. So here we are, and here it is, and it is free because it is my way of adding something back into the vaping world as a token of gratitude for making my life so much more pleasant.

    

You may feel that you would like to say ‘thank you’ for the free use of Ez-Mix, as I often do with freeware that I really like and use a lot. So I have included a button here for you to make a donation of any value you are comfortable with, if you wish.

All donations will be gratefully acknowledged.

You are under no obligation to do this, but the facility is there if you want it.

Any monies received will go to support the cost of running this website, create new freeware, and a proportion will be donated to ‘Children In Need’, a charity which I actively support.

The Future Of Ez-Mix

This is just the beginning. I have a few exciting features that I plan to add in the future to enhance its usefulness, and make recipe creation a faster and more enjoyable process. There will also be something in it for mobile (cellphone) users.

I am also considering a ‘Pro’ version aimed at Advanced or Commercial e-juice producers, but this will probably be shareware, to cover the cost of the new development tools I would need to create it. If I find I do not need new tools, then the ‘Pro’ version will not be produced, and its features will be incorporated in the free version.

Ez-Mix itself will always be free, together with any updates that are produced.

I plan to release the first update in October 2013.

I have no plans to produce a mobile (cellphone) version. I experimented with creating a version for Android, but found the operating system to be bizarre from a programmers’ perspective, and lacking the functionality in its visual controls that are available to programmers in Windows. This would have made porting the design from Windows to Android a difficult and time-consuming process which, since users would have demanded it to be free, offered little incentive to proceed. There was also the problem of creating, sharing, and storing compatible Ez-Mix recipe files, and the difficulty in printing formatted results. Besides this, there are already apps available, no matter how basic, to create DIY recipes, so I abandoned the idea.