Using 6 ohm tips with Pinecil v1?

[EgorOA]

Trying to use v2 short 6 omh tips with pinecil v1.

1. Some 65W PD chargers are rebooting. It's pitty need to use another one.
2. Temperature is changing +-10 degrees while iron is working. It seems that PID parameters for temp regulation is more suitable for 8 ohm tips than 6 ohm.

Understanding, that v1 cant measure tip resistance, can be done tip type selection in menu?

[River-Mochi]

Once the manual tip ohm selector is applied to a future V1 firmware, then potentially the V1 old pinecils could use short 6.2-6.5 ohm tips more safely.

The short tips were not made for pinecil V1 and are for newer V2 hardware.

However, a manual menu selection for V1 older pinecil is being worked on in the firmware. this would potentialy allow people with older V1 pinecil to manually select if they are using normal longer 8.0 ohm tips or newer shorter 6.2 ohm tips - which then changes which profile it will use for power and temperature.

the V2 newer iron has different hardware and does not need the manual selection, it is capable of autodetecting tips that are closer to 6 ohms or closer to 8 ohms on each reboot (hence always unplug before swapping tips).

I am currently kind of able to test short tips on my V1 even without the update but need to be sure to use a 20V 3.25amp 65W or higher charger. Weird issues happen if trying it with too low a power supply since V1 is not aware there is a 6.2 ohm tip inserted. It is currently best to just use short tips in the V2 newer iron if weird behavior is happening since the V1 thinks all tips are 8.0 ohms it is using only this profile for everything.

See this post for some details on V1 versus V2 and use of Short tips. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/wpbla4/pinecil_firmware_upgrades_new_short_tips/

[EgorOA]

the V2 newer iron has different hardware and does not need the manual selection, it is capable of autodetecting tips that are closer to 6 ohms or closer to 8 ohms on each reboot (hence always unplug before swapping tips).

It's very interesting but I can't see any difference in tip binder circuits in schematics V1 and V2
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil#Pinecil_V1_mainboard_schematic
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil#Pinecil_V2_mainboard_schematic:

And I can't understand how V2 can autodetect tip type. Help me guess it, please

[River-Mochi]

have to ask @Ralim where he implemented it in V2 code for autodetect and select correct profile for 6.2 ohms versus 8.0 ohm tips.

Ralim mentioned before that the resistance of the tip on boot-up is very noisy. Therefore, the firmware is just acting as a toggle in V2. If it's closer to 6.2 ohms, then it's picking Short tip profile. If it's closer to 8.0 ohms, then it's picking the 8.0 profile. it's not giving an exact profile based on every gradation of tip. Example some of my tips are 7.8ohm or 8.2 ohms - they will all get the 8.0 profile.

[EgorOA]

have to ask @Ralim where he implemented it in V2 code for autodetect

I have caught the difference - a little circuit (addon with 2 resistors and diod) that allows to pull up tip by GPIO24 and measure tip resistance. Pitty but V1 has no such circuit so we have to select tip type manually(

[River-Mochi]

@EgorOA I am curious, these same PD65 20V chargers, on the V1, do they work fine with no rebooting if you use the longer normal cartridge/tips?

[EgorOA]

do they work fine with no rebooting if you use the longer normal cartridge/tips?

Yes

[jayjr1105]

@Ralim I would be willing to be an early beta tester for 6ohm tips on V1 hardware. LMK! thanks!

[jakobi]

I finally received a near-unobtainium "pts200 style tip" via banggood with a cold resistance of 4.2ohm (unobtainium at least outside the US...).

Seeing no difference in a pinecil v2 between that tip and a pinecil short with 6.5 ohm, I got curious:

The below are results of using the tips in a pinecil v2 fw 1.21. As I remove the tips to measure them, multimeter results of resistance are a rough ballpark estimate due to tip cooling. The table also lists the maximum power draw I saw on the pinecil's own display during heatup.

tip style	24v	PD	25-40c	~250-300c	~400c
hakko	60W	~45	8.2	10	13
pinecilshort	77W	55W	6.4	9	11
pts200	72W	55W	4.5	6	9.5

Still, given the resistance values of that pts200 tip, I expected to see higher peak power. pinecil v2 thinks it to be a 6.2 ohm tip. Some kind of (PD negotiation and) PWM throttling based on the assumed tip resistance?

On hot insertion of tips with 24V, the pinecil refused to heat (or it tried with 0W): I had to unplug it on tip changing. Nice surprise, when trying the pts200 tip for the first time in the pinecil at 24V. I've never seen that behaviour before (at least not on PD).

Retinning after testing was done in parallel in a pinecil v1 @ 240c on usb PD, and even the pts200 played nice there (not further tested).

At 450c in a v2, the pts200 tip temperature display was way more jumpy than with the short pinecil tips, and tended to list 20w power use.

Note 1: As for being able to use hakko tips for this test: I use the rubber grips from a hakko station and hold that rather than the pinecil itself, so tip distance from hand is normal. Inside the pinecil I duct-taped a mold and filled it with epoxy to make a depth stop. This pinecil now accepts everything remotely hakko-derived, including sh72 tips, hakko, etc, pp.

Note 2: During this short test, I saw the pinecil assuming the hakko to be a 6.2ohm tip due to hot swapping and not noticing the switched tip. See my comments in #907. Issues with tip switching when heating may also be the reason for the 0W-heating fright-surprise above :).

[Ralim]

Still, given the resistance values of that pts200 tip, I expected to see higher peak power. pinecil v2 thinks it to be a 6.2 ohm tip. Some kind of (PD negotiation and) PWM throttling based on the assumed tip resistance?

So long as your power supply is capable of what a 6.2 ohm tip would pull, then there is no PWM limiting going on.
So, so long as you used a >=60W charger there isnt any limiter going on.

On hot insertion of tips with 24V, the pinecil refused to heat (or it tried with 0W): I had to unplug it on tip changing. Nice surprise, when trying the pts200 tip for the first time in the pinecil at 24V. I've never seen that behaviour before (at least not on PD).

The code will block until it can reliably determine the resistance of the tip by checking the delta via the pullup resistor.
When you are hot sometimes it will take a while for that to measure correctly. usually cycling off, letting it cool a bit and starting again fixes this. Since we are trying to measure a really small signal; once the tip or body is hot it gets dramatically harder to use. This is why the official advise is not to hot swap tips, or if you must, only to do it in the same series (i.e. only 6 ohms, or only 8 ohms).

[pwnept]

As of firmware V2.22, is there a toggle for Pinecil V1 to select between long and short tips?

[discip]

As far as I know, there isn't.