Hall Effect Sensor: add a sensor that activates with a magnet to put the Pinecil to sleep when it enters a holder or stand. I put the Pinecil through its paces, and and although the device is fully open source, give it a teardown for good measure. It was found that an M2x3mm thumb screw for the tip is a hair too short, and just grazes the Tip and the longer m2 x 4mm is better on top. Alternately, lowering the number may result in problems with PD negotiation on some PD type adapters that are slower to negotiate.

TEST CLIPS UK - PINECIL – Smart Mini Portable Soldering Iron V2

The Pinecil has evolved over the years from a 60W device into the latest rendition, the V2, which supports 24V/88W and includes the new PINE64 designed shorter tip. Like the Flipper Zero and other beloved nerd tools, there’s even a community of 3D printable projects built expressly for the Pinecil.The Pinecil is a smart mini portable soldering iron with a 32-bit RISC-V SoC featuring a sleek design, auto standby and it heats up to an operating temperature in just 12 seconds when paired with a sufficiently powerful power supply unit – such as the PinePower.

Pinecil v2-soldering iron device – bitcompact Pinecil v2-soldering iron device – bitcompact

Every month’s update says that it’s possible to watch the video summary on the Peertube channel, but no new videos have been posted there since April.

As a test i also hooked up a 5 V Raspberry Pi USB-C supply, which the iron recognised as under voltage and refused to work. I suppose one’s imagination and the sky’s the limit, but these two implementations would be legitimately useful additions rather than gimmicks.