3 ms·

You can spend a lot of money on a good iron, but you probably don’t need to. The pinecil is shockingly good for the price. And I mean that it is competitive wit

You can spend a lot of money on a good iron, but you probably don’t need to. The pinecil is shockingly good for the price. And I mean that it is competitive with a nice Hakko at literally $800 less. It’s not perfect for all situations, but if you’re doing anything short of soldering all day everyday, spend $40 and get a Pinecil off Amazon. Learn how it works, and get an appropriate stand for it.

zxexz 3y ago
Or buy directly from Pine64!
- nine_k 3y ago
  Interestingly, it's somewhat cheaper than buying via Amazon.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    You will have to wait for shipping from China- I bought one as a gift for a friend and it took about two weeks from order to arrival.
  - sircastor 3y ago
    It’s the shipping. Amazon is subsidizing the shipping in the price. There’s an advantage there that you can get it in a couple of days instead of weeks.
petsfed 3y ago
I agree that nobody needs a multi-hundred or thousand dollar iron just to learn on, but I think your rec of the pinecil for beginners is a bit flawed. To start with, the fact that the manufacturer includes the instruction set and address space size before the heat-up time makes me pretty skeptical. I get that its hackable, and that's cool and all, but as with all "smart things", I care about the "thing" part way more than the "smart" part. I can implement a PID controller in about 20 minutes (maybe an hour if I need to bit bang the pwm output) on any number of microcontrollers; that's the easy part. Also, the USB-C power supply is going to be nothing but a headache. I already have drawers and drawers of usb cables that can't handle the current I want to use, now I need to keep careful track of my soldering cable, which only performs at 60W over USB (and at best 90W using a barrel jack supply)? And the iron doesn't even come with a power supply, so you have to go source that too. It may be $40 for the iron, but then its another $10-40 for the power supply, plus (as you say) an appropriate stand, brass sponge, etc, etc. Suddenly, the dedicated station like the (very affordable Hakko FX888D-23BY) starts to look pretty good. The pinecil seems like a good thing to keep in your crash bag, but it feels a bit like refusing to buy a power drill because your swiss army knife has a screw driver.
- dharmab 3y ago
  If you buy direct from Pine64, you can get a stand for an extra two bucks. A brass sponge is what, another two dollars? And many hackers likely already have a GaN charger or Apple charger.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    Great, perfect for the would-be hacker who bought an arduino and some random breakout board! All that stands between you and a dodgy temperature sensor is a [checks notes] spare laptop power supply! Who doesn't have one of those just laying around prior to embarking on a career of hardware hacking? My criticism is that, as a first soldering iron, you shouldn't have to have a bunch of background knowledge just to know what parts are missing. They should at least sell a kit with all that stuff.
    - dharmab 3y ago
      My first soldering iron was the one from Harbor Freight. No kit there either, I had to look up a list of stuff to buy.
    - arp242 3y ago
      > My criticism is that, as a first soldering iron, you shouldn't have to have a bunch of background knowledge just to know what parts are missing. They should at least sell a kit with all that stuff. I guess that's fair for someone who is completely new to the world of electronics such as teenagers or older people who just never really did a lot of tech stuff. But for many tech-y people without a soldering iron the Pinecil is fine; I don't currently own a soldering iron and I've never really been into electronics, but the Pinecil would be brilliant for me because 1) I know about tech-y stuff in general, and 2) I do know the basics of electronics and how to solder. I think this probably applies to most of the sad losers on HN who don't own a soldering iron. In general Pine64 is explicitly aimed at hobbyists and people who "know what they're doing" rather than the mass market.
    - eternityforest 3y ago
      You need some way to power the stuff you're going to build, so why not just get a multi-output charger that can run the Pinecil and also power your project and charge your phone? Now that USB-PD triggers, and ESP32 Arduinos with USB-C exist, I think it makes a lot of sense just to use them for almost everything.

zxexz 3y ago

Or buy directly from Pine64!

nine_k 3y ago
Interestingly, it's somewhat cheaper than buying via Amazon.
- dharmab 3y ago
  You will have to wait for shipping from China- I bought one as a gift for a friend and it took about two weeks from order to arrival.
- sircastor 3y ago
  It’s the shipping. Amazon is subsidizing the shipping in the price. There’s an advantage there that you can get it in a couple of days instead of weeks.

petsfed 3y ago

I agree that nobody needs a multi-hundred or thousand dollar iron just to learn on, but I think your rec of the pinecil for beginners is a bit flawed. To start with, the fact that the manufacturer includes the instruction set and address space size before the heat-up time makes me pretty skeptical. I get that its hackable, and that's cool and all, but as with all "smart things", I care about the "thing" part way more than the "smart" part. I can implement a PID controller in about 20 minutes (maybe an hour if I need to bit bang the pwm output) on any number of microcontrollers; that's the easy part. Also, the USB-C power supply is going to be nothing but a headache. I already have drawers and drawers of usb cables that can't handle the current I want to use, now I need to keep careful track of my soldering cable, which only performs at 60W over USB (and at best 90W using a barrel jack supply)? And the iron doesn't even come with a power supply, so you have to go source that too. It may be $40 for the iron, but then its another $10-40 for the power supply, plus (as you say) an appropriate stand, brass sponge, etc, etc. Suddenly, the dedicated station like the (very affordable Hakko FX888D-23BY) starts to look pretty good. The pinecil seems like a good thing to keep in your crash bag, but it feels a bit like refusing to buy a power drill because your swiss army knife has a screw driver.

dharmab 3y ago
If you buy direct from Pine64, you can get a stand for an extra two bucks. A brass sponge is what, another two dollars? And many hackers likely already have a GaN charger or Apple charger.
- petsfed 3y ago
  Great, perfect for the would-be hacker who bought an arduino and some random breakout board! All that stands between you and a dodgy temperature sensor is a [checks notes] spare laptop power supply! Who doesn't have one of those just laying around prior to embarking on a career of hardware hacking? My criticism is that, as a first soldering iron, you shouldn't have to have a bunch of background knowledge just to know what parts are missing. They should at least sell a kit with all that stuff.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    My first soldering iron was the one from Harbor Freight. No kit there either, I had to look up a list of stuff to buy.
  - arp242 3y ago
    > My criticism is that, as a first soldering iron, you shouldn't have to have a bunch of background knowledge just to know what parts are missing. They should at least sell a kit with all that stuff. I guess that's fair for someone who is completely new to the world of electronics such as teenagers or older people who just never really did a lot of tech stuff. But for many tech-y people without a soldering iron the Pinecil is fine; I don't currently own a soldering iron and I've never really been into electronics, but the Pinecil would be brilliant for me because 1) I know about tech-y stuff in general, and 2) I do know the basics of electronics and how to solder. I think this probably applies to most of the sad losers on HN who don't own a soldering iron. In general Pine64 is explicitly aimed at hobbyists and people who "know what they're doing" rather than the mass market.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    You need some way to power the stuff you're going to build, so why not just get a multi-output charger that can run the Pinecil and also power your project and charge your phone? Now that USB-PD triggers, and ESP32 Arduinos with USB-C exist, I think it makes a lot of sense just to use them for almost everything.