Soldering pen for Weller RT tips with OLED display

very hardware hacker need good soldering tool. My idea was to build own but with very specific qualities. On one side not so expensive, on second side high quality and also small with precise control and features. I found some projects where is used Weller soldering tips designed for WMRP soldering iron with standard 3.5mm jack and inside the tip is also thermocouple for sensing temperature. These tips are not so cheap but the quality is really great, especially for fine soldering. Hardware design is based on similar projects but with many modifications and improvements. Also my request was to make the hardware small as possible to fit into handle and capable to supply from hobbyist LiPO battery.Buy one on tindiy: https://www.tindie.com/products/vlk/rt-soldering-pen/

Today, let’s check out the Pinecil. A soldering iron by Pine64, released a few years ago, keeping the price low and quality high. It sports both a barrel jack and a USB-C port for its power input – a welcome departure from the Miniware iron strategy, where neither the barrel-jack-only TS100 nor the low-power proprietary-tip TS80 irons quite did it. And, given its design around TS100 T12-style tips, it’s no wonder Pinecil took a well-deserved spot in hobbyist world.

Pinecil went the “PD stack software + PD frontend IC” way, devoting part of the MCU to the realtime nature of PD communications. The PD frontend used is the FUSB302, connected to the MCU over the regular I2C interface. The microcontroller itself has changed from the GD32VF103 in Pinecil v1 to the BL706 in Pinecil v2 – both of them RISC-V.

Leading USB-C In Open-Source

Writing a USB-C PD software stack is not as straightforward as writing, say, an ADC driver. To enforce the coexistence and safety requirements, USB-C uses state machines. If you’ve ever had someone share one of these intimidating diagrams straight from USB-C documentation pages with you, you might be inclined to believe that USB-C is best not touched by humans. That viewpoint isn’t entirely wrong – reimplementing these state machines is not something you necessarily might want to spend your time doing. On the other hand, despite the informationally aggressive nature, the state machines involved are simpler than they might look.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ApVw0e-svts&feature=youtu.be

By now most readers will be familiar with the Miniware TS100 and TS80 soldering irons, compact and lightweight temperature controlled soldering tools that have set a new standard at the lower-priced end of the decent soldering iron market. We know they have an STM32 processor, a USB interface, and an OLED display, and that there have been a variety of alternative firmwares produced for them.

Take a close look at the TS80, and you’ll find the element connector is rather familiar. It’s a 3.5 mm jack plug, something we’re more used to as an audio connector.

[Joric], who has created a music player firmware for the little USB-C iron.

https://github.com/joric/ts80player