March Update: Status Report

https://www.pine64.org/2021/03/15/march-update/

by mfsch • 5 years ago

81 35 5 years ago

royletron2• 5 years ago

I always wonder when I read these, wouldn't it be easier to focus on one project? It seems they've gone to town! Laptops, watches, phones!

stormqloud2• 5 years ago

I'm still trying to understand why they sell a soldering iron with a cpu and os.

royletron2• 5 years ago

Yes this

pta2002• 5 years ago

I have the soldering iron that is based off, the TS100, and it's really useful. The CPU lets you regulate temperature, and it has features like lowering the temperature when you don't move it for a bit. That's what the CPU is there for, it's really just a microcontroller. Good luck making a (minimally decent) soldering iron without one for temperature control.

nmaggioni• 5 years ago

Lower the temperature or turn off when not moved for some time, better temperature control via PIDs, set a voltage cutoff when running off battery packs...

https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS#key-features

outworlder2• 5 years ago

OS is a misnomer. It doesn't have an OS, just firmware.

megous2• 5 years ago

I like that it's small and I can just plug it to USB-C charger that's on my table. I also have a bigger soldering station, but it takes valuable space on the table.

For quick soldering jobs it's faster to just use pinecil, instead of setting up soldering station on the table.

I don't care much for electronic control. Apparently it has a bunch of features, but I don't use any of those.

myself248• 5 years ago

Use one for a while.

Desktop soldering irons have had sleep features for years -- the temperature relaxes when you put it in the holder (or after it's been in the holder for a while) to reduce tip oxidation, but keep it warm-ish so it'll be back to soldering temperature very quickly when you pick it back up. These are based on a processor, you just don't have access to it as a user, so the timeout and temperature are set by the factory and that's it.

There are plenty of soldering irons with a digital display, which allows you to calibrate the temperature response using a simple two-point process, rather than back-and-forth twiddling of the gains of a couple of opamps on the old analog stations. Those were such a pain to calibrate, few folks bothered, and the temperature setpoint on the dial grew increasingly fictional with age. The digital ones are based on a processor, but often the UI is so terrible (two buttons, three digits of 7-segment display) there could be more features back there but nobody would use them.

When OLED displays got cheap, that changed things. You can now have high-res text without a huge screen, and finally give someone all the knobs they'd want. Timeouts extend tip life. Calibration is really good and easy. Momentary boost mode for large joints without having to change the setpoint. It's the features you'd find in a thousand-dollar Pace station, in a sub-hundred-dollar portable iron, because all the complexity is in software.

And, bonus, since it runs off random DC, you can use any laptop brick you have sitting around, or batteries. They're extremely popular with RC hobbyists for field repairs as a result, and when running from battery you need another feature -- low-input shutdown, so you don't accidentally overdischarge the battery, which can damage it. Yet another feature that costs $0 once the hardware is there.

goda90• 5 years ago

I imagine the broad range of products helps attract more tinkerers than individual projects might. Like maybe someone sees the PineBook and then jumps to the PinePhone once they join the community.

Mediterraneo10• 5 years ago

I'm really looking forward to the PinePhone keyboard. Except for web-browsing, I use Emacs for almost everything else, so just give me a way to conveniently use Emacs on the PinePhone like I used to on the Nokia N900 and I can almost excuse all the PinePhone’s other flaws (e.g. a weak processor resembling a low-end Android phone from 2014, and a hard limit of 3GB of RAM on that processor).

However, though the hardware seems to be progressing well, I worry about the software side, both developing for the phone and using the phone enough to produce good bug reports. Is it just me, or is there much less community activity around the PinePhone than there was around the Nokia N900?

linmob• 5 years ago

Regarding community activity: I think there‘s a lot going on, I had no problem to write my weekly update for my blog (https://linmob.net) for 37 times now and I have trouble testing and adding all the software projects to http://appl.ist).

Like everything these days, the active community seems to be more scattered, while PINE64 has a forum, this not really the central place Maemo.org seemed to be (I could not afford a N900 at the time). There are multiple subreddits, Twitter, the fediverse, chat rooms (and all the distributions have their own channels) – all this makes it hard to make sure to not miss out.

geerlingguy• 5 years ago

Regarding component shortages:

'Quoting the words of a factory head we work with: “I haven’t seen anything like this in the 15 years that I’ve been in the business.”'

When will we get back to a status quo, or is "2+ years unless you're a multi-billion-dollar company" the new status quo for sourcing things now?

cogman10• 5 years ago

Unless something significant changes, I think 2+ years is looking a lot more like the status quo.

The problem is that fabrication plants are hella expensive to tool. That's why there are so few companies worldwide that can participate.

simonbarker87• 5 years ago

I remember starting to have trouble placing seasonal orders for dc power supplies 4 years ago - this isn’t going away anytime soon. There is an opportunity here for someone/some group with deeeeeep pockets and some vision. Unlike a risky biotech, you know the tech is good and the market is there, this is a supply problem (all the way down to mining).

chubs• 5 years ago

I wonder if this could be the thing that drives on-shoring in the west.

mbreese• 5 years ago

We’ve been hearing about Chip shortages for awhile now, but this was the first first-party explanation I’ve seen. I think these monthly updates really helps to add some inside perspective on hardware manufacturing. Even if you don’t buy Pine64 products, these are super interesting to read.

jay_kyburz• 5 years ago

Just wait to the cold war with China really gets started and you can't buy anything from there at all!

throwawaysea• 5 years ago

Very cool to see their community update video is also available on LBRY (https://lbry.tv) and PeerTube (https://joinpeertube.org/).

captainchris3• 5 years ago

Besides being open source and not connected to big tech, and besides being designed/built with privacy in mind, what fundamental security advantages does a project like Pine offer over aapl/goog's efforts, from a hardware/software design perspective? Apologies for the simplistic inquiry.

The reason for asking is that goog/aapl have had generations of highly paid talent trudging through a security nightmare and are presumably generations ahead of what is even feasible for non-big tech interests.

megous2• 5 years ago

It allows easilly booting from external media, without involving any existing changeable SW on the phone.

Without HW mods, there's nothing some malware can do to persist itself in the device and prevent you from running exactly what you want and nothing else. You can just insert a known good uSD card, and the SoC will boot from it.

So you can conceivably use an OS from uSD card as an outside root of trust for verifying/reflashing the changeable parts of the phone.

Normally the trust is rooted in some fused keys and hopefully properly implemented bootloader, which seems inherently less trustworthy and much more complex.

blihp2• 5 years ago

The security advantage it offers is specifically to remove aapl/goog from the equation. The security features big tech is offering these days is primarily designed to lock you into their ecosystem and out of your device rather than actually securing it for you. The primary security they're offering is from casual hacking, which of course has value if you're not tech savvy and unable to do that for yourself.

captainchris3• 5 years ago

is that really the case? apple as example, they develop secretive and innovative security measures that, while compatible with their corporate mandates, do actually aim to protect end users. yes, this is in contradiction to certain privacy needs, user lock-in, etc as you mentioned

primarily, i am interested to learn what pine or other offering does outside of the obvious benefits of it being open. specifically, what security measures on their own merit, hardware and/or software, does pine offer, either uniquely or in an effort to "catch up" (e.g. secure enclave)

the-nozzle• 5 years ago

Why is every linux laptop manufacturer insistent on using panels which likely came from a dumpster behind a 7-11 ? I have yet to see an open source laptop with anything above 1080p which looks like complete ass, and makes you want to claw out your eyes after an hour of real work ..

monksy• 5 years ago

I love how they're clear about component cost increases. They're worried about a chnage from 200->220 because of the LCD panel. Given the good reviews, I think that's completely reasonable.

March Update: Status Report

Related Stories