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Comment by kwiens | Hacker News Reader

You can set the temperature on the iron with our web console, which uses Web Serial: https://www.ifixit.com/fixhub/console

Once you set the temperature, the iron remembers it and you can use any power source.

We've spent a lot of time talking to engineers and makers who solder all day, and it turns out that most people rarely change the temperature. Pick a temperature you like and leave it there.

Our heating algorithm detects and dynamically responds to load, so you don't need to turn the temperature up for larger thermal masses: it'll add as many joules as required to get it to temperature.

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I definitely can see that, I rarely change my solder iron temp too but the biggest issue is that I purposely do not keep my phone or laptop within reach where I solder. I still use lead solder and I don’t want to accidentally rub off any. Seems like a huge pain to wash my hand, get my laptop, change temp, then continue. But like you mentioned, I probably haven’t changed the temp on my iron in a while, ironically the last time I changed it was because I used silver solder.

Do you have plans to have an actual local application to do this? Chrome-only web tools are not sustainable and a deal breaker.

This is something I'm wondering about, because yeah - my ability to change the iron temperature (if not using the battery) shouldn't depend on iFixit's servers being online. I would at least hope that they document the protocol so that other people can write local applications to do it if not.

Protocol here:

https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/fixhub_seria...

As noted in the article, there's also a traditional serial interface.

In that case, an Arduino + touch screen would be a nice little addon for this.

> Pick a temperature you like and leave it there.

It's hard to argue because that's mostly what I do. But it feel really odd for a soldering iron not to have a temperature control right on it. Especially given competitor irons have screens and buttons. Going to a web interface seems insane in comparison to pressing some buttons.

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