Alas, this was a good experiment, but my iron inexplicably ceased to function yesterday. It really was great while it lasted, and perhaps mine is an anomaly. I’ll be getting a proper station next, I think.
Totaly dead? Cant flash it or something?
Oh is that an option? When I plug in the power cord, it turns on about 1/3 of the time; and when it does turn on the screen is just random pixels and non-responsive to the physical buttons.
I don’t know, I just thought it was a feature hence the open source part of the pinecil.
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I searched around a little and found this Pinecil resource wiki. I’ll try using the updater to flash it and see if that rehabilitates the iron.
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Cool! Let’s hope for the best 
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So, it kind of worked? After I flashed it, it gave me a partial screen of text, and I was able to turn on the heating element once (out of many tries). But it doesn’t work in any reliable way (I’d also consider ‘accidentally’ turning it on with a blank screen to be a bit too risky.)
I’ll keep it and dismantle it, and maybe I’ll learn/fix something by opening it up. Anyway, thanks @skepp for the idea; I was able to learn how to flash this thing and slow down enough to do some due diligence before buying an altogether new station 
Pinecil in the spotlight 
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If I could get one for the 25 I would absolutely get one. I do have a TS80P because of the USB C in favor of the TS100. For 25 it would just be a gold addition to the collection, also with cheaper tips than for the TS80.
Woah! Lots of good “general” soldering advice on here as well. Thank you for the share!
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just got one of these for my small soldering projects. The price makes it worth the chance it’s not worth it and will save a ton of space in my tool box. Will look through the thread for any usage tricks/tips/weird things.
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I’ve been using an original Pinecil for about a year or so now and I love it. It has completely replaced my Hakko FX888D.
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