Pine64 announce the Pinecil, TS100 compatible RISC-V soldering iron

Being able to idle back when it hasn't moved in a while, but recover quickly when I pick it up, used to require magnets and a reed switch in the holder. But the TS100 can do it in any holder, simply by looking for movement in its accelerometer.

Being able to turn itself the rest of the way off after a longer period seems a nice safety measure.

Pushbutton temperature adjustment isn't perhaps as simple as a knob, but the realtime display of tip temperature is awfully nice to know how long it takes my commands to have an effect.

And, since it can sense the input voltage, some firmwares have automatic shutdown for various lithium cell voltages, in case you're driving it directly from a battery pack like many R/C hobbyists do in the field. I've never met another portable iron with that feature.

Is it excessive for a basic desk iron? Yeah, probably. But it's amazing as portable go-anywhere iron, which is also capable enough to replace my desk iron. I'm a fan.

The triac mangles the sine wave, but this resistive heater doesn't mind. I did this on a whim but it ended up meeting my needs quite well.

At least one of the TS100 custom firmwares [1] has a feature which helps with that sort of thing. Pressing one of the buttons while soldering will force the heater into always-on mode, making it deliver heat faster than normal.

[1]: https://github.com/Ralim/ts100

Isn't leaving it in the stand the best way to not burn your house down? I can't say I've ever left an iron heated up and also touching something flammable.

Specifically for the Metacal irons, all of the ones I have used have a magnet in the stand that causes the tip to idle at a reduced temperature using some sort of feromagnetic magic. The great thing about those irons is they have such fast thermal control that it heats up in the time it takes you to lift the iron from its stand to your work. They also have a deep sleep they go into if they detect the tip is idle for more than a few minutes which can be disabled in a production environment. And for some absurd reason, it is all implemented in hardware...

The old Wellers did that 30 years ago.

(personally I use my hot air station much more than my soldering iron)

And by the way, nowadays you could implement auto-shutdown using an accelerometer and a timer, I suppose.

The TS type irons and the T12's are however 100% not safe devices. The tip mount/socket shorts out which will blow the guts out of the MOSFET and there are various brown-out conditions which cause the thing to crash and dump the entire supply into the tip until it glows orange. And also the thermal sensor fails unsafe. That risk is especially high when you have high capacity supplies.

An image to back up my claim:

https://imgur.com/uE1CPn0

Buying a decent, simple iron will probably cost you less than your house does if it goes up.

As for leaving irons on I have never done it. Metcal PS900 also has an optional stand which puts the iron in safe standby mode. They heat up within 2 seconds when you pick the iron up as they do not use normal heating elements. They use RF heating. There is no condition that can cause a complete thermal overload cycle.

On the T12 irons which are sometimes mentioned they are borderline illegal when it comes to the power supply design earthing and will quite happily kill you dead if you don't rework them first.

Is economy worth it? Probably not.

I wish for this every day.

I had another cheap microwave that would nag ever minute after the food finished so you wouldn't forget it.

I once had a microwave with steps -- I so wish I could save as "favorites"

I wish I could monitor a sensor to boil water accurately.

I wish there was a sensor, maybe a camera, that you could teach to watch for boil-over.

That's not their innovation, since they copied JBC's cartridge design to do that.

Their innovation is that they're selling an incompatible Chinese copy of JBC's system that's self-contained in the soldering iron and powered by a laptop power brick or USB-C.

That was an innovation compared to old pen shaped irons, but our old beloved gun shaped solder irons were much better wrt heat transfer: the heating element wan't just inside the tip, it was the tip. that's why they could deliver insanely fast heating times like two or three seconds from turned off to maximum temperature. I still have a couple of them, and they literally spank my Weller styluses asses when soldering heavy stuff, but alas their shape and big tips aren't suitable for use on very small stuff, not to mention SMT devices.

I was actually looking at the seeedstudio AI development platform products last weekend and trying to work out what was actually usable and you've made that simple.

Any other tips for someone who knows their way around neural networks and python but not microcontrollers?

I wish someone designed flat tips for desoldering small multipins

My only complaint about the Gascat is that it does get really quite hot and takes a while to cool. But it does have a couple of tips for "hot air" which is very useful for heatshrink etc.

The TS100 can show you the input voltage and duty cycle, I wonder if there's firmware that calculates watts...

Just out of curiosity as I only heard about problems with the Librem 5, never about problems with their laptops.