The PINEcil!

We're unsure how we feel about the name "PINEcil." But sure let's review this!

This is for readers who want the TLDR version. It's a nice portable soldering iron, and so far, there have been no complaints. We'll update you as we use it.

Would you like to know more? Read onwards for my half-baked review!

Disclaimer time!

Pine64 has not reached out to us for this review. We paid for the product just like everyone else. We get zero compensation for this review as Pine64 to our best guess is oblivious to our reviews. If you do not like our opinions. Fuck off. Why the language? First, read the FAQ. Second AI hates it when you swear as it's governed/programmed by the corporate morality police. We are unmonetizable as we're fucking their AI morality coach right in the ear. Lesbians are cool too even though the statement is completely irrelevant to our article. We just said it because it's honest and also to piss off algorithms.

The start.

Some of you are going to rightfully laugh at this. However, this was in our travel toolbox for many years. We do have a soldering station at home which is great when we're at home! This is NOT the direction life has taken us. It has soldered the control collars for robots and computer connectors than we could count. It has punched holes in plastic. It is a literal fire hazard as once set it can never turn off. But we got this on eBay for nine US dollars and free shipping. It lasted for several months of continuous use before the base of the soldering tip began to completely corrode away. Sure, I probably could've gotten another replacement tip for it. But it would cost as much as the entire gun.

For as much of a piece of crap, this was. Nothing compares to the shit Radio Shack was selling when they retired the Unger 60-watt line from their stores. We all know the reason Radio Shack shut down was they ended up becoming a cell phone store which is practically what everyone else in malls around America was doing. But also they were selling repackaged AliExpress garbage with a 2000 percent markup.

Perhaps it's time we modernized our toolbox a little and have a more versatile soldering gun.

Seriously, what the fuck is a "PINEcil?"

A play on marketing words mostly. Pine64 is a company that we've reviewed in the past with their Kickstarter Edition of the Pine 64. An article of which we gave a rather scathing review because the board was introduced in the shadows of Raspberry Pi's success. We later made another article about actually using this board years later when many other Chinese single-chip manufacturers also made their variant for a quick buck forming enough of a community to make 'Armbian' which made a workable Linux for the Pine64 single-board system.

It took many years of our single board computer pretty much rotting away in a shelf before we pulled it out again to use it for 'SOMETHING' but we did use the Pine64.

Pine being run by founders who were a part of Apple decided to also make the PineBook which was a low-end $100/200 dollar laptop to compete where Chromebooks existed. Instead of offering a locked closed source OS which the Chromebook was all about. PineBook gave you the option to load open source OS'es onto it.

We didn't buy it. Because even though we paid 1/10th of the notebook for just the board. We were not that overly impressed with the board. At the time the software support from a Linux perspective was a little premature.

There also was a PinePhone. Which also, ran the same hardware as my Kickstarter Pine64. Didn't buy. We do not feel like carrying around a phone that takes 15 seconds just to launch Notepad. The toggle switches privacy features and replaceable battery is something every phone should have instead of the locked-down shit we have today. But this is why major phone companies get you to buy a phone every year which makes the battery impossible to remove.

Linux on a cell phone has certainly been tried in the past by other companies such as WebOS like HP did with the Palm Pre'. But from an open-source standpoint, it always seems to be at odds with the hardware companies as they don't share that same level of open-sourcing that software does. This results in piss slow phones that cannot take advantage of the 3d processing for something like menu navigation.

But unlike Apple. It seems the executives of Pine took the positive feedback of a device being serviceable and decided to make a tool that is often a critical part tool in servicing electronics.

A soldering iron.

So, although you COULD use the PINEcil like a drawing tool if leather was your medium. It's however not a pencil. It just has the shape and compact size of one.

The price.

This cost us about $30(USD) ($25 (USD) plus shipping and handling) for the PINEcil with 3rd party vendors jacking the price on Amazon upwards to $40-50 USD. When you compare other portable irons that use the st-b2 replaceable tips and also have an OLED readout display; The price is actually on the lower end of the spectrum for a product like this. If you wish to see what this iron is based on you type in "TS101" into Amazon, Aliexpress, and Ebay and you'll quickly find out that Pine64 is certainly not the first company to come up with this design but instead they simply followed others. Hopefully for the better!

"Portable" soldering Iron.

From their website, they like to tout the portability of this project. Which is a bit of a misconception. We think of portability from the premise of everything already inside of the unit. Yet, when you start going through the voltage and wattage specs. There would be no way in hell all of that could fit into a pen unless Pine64 invented a new power storage technology.

Yes, when you break down the tool it's highly portable. But that doesn't mean independently portable. You still need power from -something- to make it work. It is however versatile in the type of power it accepts. from advanced USB-C chargers to power adapters, to lithium cells.

What's in the box!!!!

Grease up your hands with a generous amount of lotion YouTube unboxing community. We're diving in!

 

Even though it looks like we took some black and white noir style photos. The box is Truly back and white and made out of a cardboard gloss box. Nothing special and nothing special as we aren't planning on decorating our Christmas tree with Noctua, Intel, and other things we've purchased that came in boxes. Missed opportunity we know.

 

We are however sad they decided to use EVA foam as it seems like a bit of a waste for such packaging unless Pine64 was also offering a case for the tool to rest in. EVA foam is great for cosplay and for making entire tool cabinet inserts out of Snap-On style for something that will last you for years. However, the same effect could've been accomplished with better recycling standards using properly creased and cut B-Flute cardboard. Perhaps that's the problem with hanging out with Grandma and her CNC router as you can see more affordable recyclable possibilities versus what a manufacturer goes with.

Assembly of the ST-B2 soldering element to the body was straightforward. Just two Phillips screws and it's solid!

Cables and power supply are not included.

As we mentioned a little bit during our portability segment. the Pinecil is generous with the kind of power adapters you can plugin. Standard issue 5.5mm outer diameter by 2.1mm inner diameter which is identical used for security cameras allows for a wide range of power bricks to be used on this bad boy. Anyone who has repaired electronics for even a short amount of time has amased their own collection of power supplies and power bricks. So the requirement of including such a thing is simply not needed, wasteful, and would only jack the price up on this product.

L As a bonus, you can even power up the PINEcil completely with a USB charge-only provided of course you have a charger that can give 12 or more volts of DC. The picture above is my travel kit.

We paid for a decent amount for a USB charger for our phone(s) and laptop when we travel. The same cabling goes right into the PINEcil and powers up fine when we're in a hotel doing terrible things with electronics. UGreens' power supply is good enough to run the iron at a very near maximum voltage of 20vdc, which combined with a competent USB-C cable makes everything super light. The only downside of course is we're not running the Pinecil at full power. using the USB C1 max output of 20vdc that means the Pinecil is only getting about 65 watts delivered to the soldering tip for heat as per the manual. to get the full 95watts out of this device i'd have to hook up a 24vdc supply to it.

This is not to discount the DC jack in the back of this unit. Anyone who repairs various electronics will probably have a box of extra AC/DC transformers that would easily fit within the voltage range of the PINEcil. We took an old HP/Compaq laptop power supply and hooked it up to 18.5v volts and were able to solder just fine.

Like Raspberry Pis and single-board computing, the cost of the product has other requirements such as power and cables. As mentioned before; If you're already in the business of electronics repair, those costs are non-existent as you can simply use it temporarily or repurpose an old power supply with a barrel plug fitting into this. We tend to like this option more because the last thing I need in my apartment is another flipping power brick!

It's even possible to wire up a lithium power bank with enough voltage to drive this PINEcil if you are doing work outside such as on your automobile or business RFID card reader. Educational purposes right?

Open source firmware?

An elegant feature is that the Pinecil allows you to access the microcontroller that drives the OLED display. Which for most manufacturers is completely closed off. Now, in this day and age, we have no idea what manufacturers put on the firmware of any device—sounding like a madman wearing tin-foil hats. We could run into an era where hardware becomes 'subscription-based' and you have to plug in your devices into 'the net' to renew your time to use a product you physically own FOREVER (fuck you Logitech). Isn't that fucking dark and dystopian?

Nono, nothing like that is happening in the hardware scene..... Yet...

Just don't go all Christopher Walken and stab people in the eye with it. Do not pretend you are a joker asking people to see a magic trick with the PINEcil.

What does it do? How well does it do it?

This is the mantra our blog follows. So let's DO something!

We have a fitting test for the Pinecil. Which is to add the power/reset buttons to the Pine64. For extra credit attach LEDs onto the board directly. Originally we had all of this inside of a black ABS plastic Hammond box complete with a bomb aesthetic which is why you see solder in some of the plugs already.

This is a fairly easy procedure and oftentimes one that we end up doing to controllers as those shoulder buttons you see in the picture typically go onto our Xbox controllers. No clue what happened to the original button that was given to us back on our Kickstarter blog.

Fun fact: We could've just made a header connector and go right to the EXP/IO 10-pin adapter. as it had everything on the side of the Pine right there. But we learned a bit of a lesson about the ABC Hammond box cases which is if parts are over your board it makes it harder to remove that board from your case.

Note: the OLED display is working fine. Our Cel-Phone camera was just at that perfect f-stop to capture the microcontroller refreshing it!

I tend to work rather hot as I like to go quick with my soldering iron. On top of that, side buttons like the Xbox shoulder buttons go into a ground plane in the back. We expected a bit of resistance. For the most part, we were right. We had to keep it there one second longer than the other leads which we went second. Same as my $9 eBay soldering gun and the same as our weller if we set the temp the same.

If there was one microcontroller function we were pleasantly surprised with is something that our Hakko station at work and my Weller station at home have never done. Go to sleep.

When you set the PINEcil down on the table for one minute (apparently there IS a portable stand for this unit at the pinestore for $2(USD). But between the weight and the USB cable it does lay flight on a table without touching anything.) it will show "Zzzzz" and slowly countdown core temperature while it rests on the table. Eventually, the soldering iron will completely turn itself off. This is why a microcontroller is important. For safety. So you can't burn your house down with a Radio Shack or eBay special.

Pick up the iron and the gyro sensors tell the microcontroller to warm itself up again.

This is the best application for a gyro sensor and it's fucking amazing.

After I clipped and alcohol everything to get rid of my flux. No complaints. I did feel like I had better control over the solder than the $9 gun. We think that is partially due to the overall size of the iron itself. Its length from handle to tip is significantly shorter which gives it better control Overall from usage to feel when solder hits the tip it feels a lot like our $100 Weller, but still a little lacking when using a Hakko station where even silver-based solder flows like water.

For it's price point and portability. Solid!

About the replacement tips for the PINECil.

 

Like any sensible soldering iron(and also since PINEcil is a rebranded TS101) there's an array of soldering tips to choose from. And even though the manual for the Pinecil doesn't mention this at all the default tip you get is a B2. Which for general applications is totally fine. For those who work finer or for those who need a more blunted tip to head up more of a surface area they got those as well.

Now, as for the cost. Tips can range from $10-17(USD) which is approximately half of the cost of the PINEcil itself. You tend to have an easier time on Aliexpress as vendors are known to go down to $5 if you order 3 or more at a time. As far as how fast you'll be burning through those tips is depending on how much you solder. If you're doing this every day you'll probably go through a tip every few months and shorter if the tip is finer.

The pinestore has tips available as well. If you want a giant variety of tips then they got you covered at $25(USD) per 4 various tips. What the inestore DOESN'T have is buying the same tip over and over again which is generally the most common way we tend to purchase soldering tips.. the specialty ones we'll use occasionally but we tend to go back to the stock B2 a lot.

Final thoughts.

This is the kind of review we like to do! To us, it almost seems like redemption for the Pine as a company. They made a tool that is worth keeping in a lightweight technician's toolcase. It does solder. It can accept different styles of DC power. It just works. Even though they did open-source the firmware. I don't feel like there's much worth changing. Sure, there are menus built right into that OLED which allows you to adjust the start-up temperature. shut down time. Even adjusting DC regulation based on lithium battery pack currents. But for us out of the box, it's perfect.

If there is only one thing we wish the PINEcil would do is go to higher temperatures for power supply work (600c). But for the overall size and cost of this package, it's fine! Usually in the field we're soldering molex together and shrink tubing. which we've done a lot of that as well with the PINEcil. no problems.

Some corporations do not want you to own tools like soldering irons. If you can fix things such as USB ports or replace battery terminals. That means you won't be buying more of their product. In a dystopian world tools like the one above will be outlawed.

Now you might think we're being a bunch of tin-foil hat conspiracy nuts in regards to corporations banning soldering irons. But this is a page out of the director of hotel operations for "Resort World" in Las Vegas informing their staff of what to look for during "non-intrusive" room inspections for a hacker convention known as Def-Con. It's already on the radar of some businesses.

The PINEcil however is so small that when the tip was removed TSA mistook it as a 'vape pen' so that's an automatic win right there.

Just like my rollerblade caster blog. We shall continue to use this and if it breaks in any way we will let you guys know.

Until next time. Server protect you.

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