Our commenteers have all said good things about the open-source TS100 soldering iron pencil: things like “it solders well”. But we’ve all got soldering irons that solder well. What possible extra value does having open-source firmware on a soldering iron bring? [Joric] answered that question for us — it can play Tetris. (Video embedded below.)
While that’s cool and all, it wasn’t until we were reading through the README over at GitHub that the funniest part of this hack hit us. Every time you lose a game, the iron tip temperature increases by 10 degrees. Tetris for masochists? The makings of some horrible bar bets? We’re just glad that it’s open-source, because we’re not that good and it would get too hot to handle fast.
We haven’t tried out a TS100 yet, but this hack is almost pushing us to impulse purchase. There are alternative versions of the firmware if you just don’t like the font, for instance. And now, Tetris. Will this become the hot new gaming platform that you’ve been waiting for? Let us know in the comments.
But when will it play doom?
But when will it play Crysis?
reminds me of the painstation from the computergame museum..
Make sure the heating element is disabled or it could be very painful.
Love it! Was gonna pass but now I gotta have it. The song that is. Soldering irons I have already.
Yeah, the weird song got me good.
Found the full music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8
Nice :-)
I just remember an HP Osci about 20 years ago where you could play a Tetris game after pressing 2 buttons in a secret way.
The HP 54600B scope easter egg: http://www.eeggs.com/items/39244.html
IIRC some similar models have Breakout, and others have Arkanoid. My favorite is still the old HP ScanJet scanners that would play Ode To Joy through the stepper if you held down the scan button while powering on.
Exactly! Thanks for this reference.
Bonus points for the amazing song, and great ‘hack’ overall
And if you lost your finger gets hot
The opensource firmware can do a few things. It can work as a contact thermometer when you’re not soldering, or a voltmeter. You could use it as a level since it has an accelerometer, or as a timer.
Overall I love the TS100, it solders well, I can power it with RC lipos out in the field and I’ve also converted some of my other appliances to use XT60 connectors for power, and put an XT60 on my laptop’s power supply, so I can take a single PS with me on travel an account for everything.
Note there are a few documented hardware mods for the TS100, unfortnately most of them are in chinese and on Chinese forums.
Should get hot for every line you send.
I have one of these irons. At first I thought it would just be something I would toss into my bag for travelling, but its light weight and quick heat times have made it my goto 80% of the time.
Just got one of these last week, very happy with it.
Finally! A worthy platform for my next emacs port so I can send email from the bench.
I got two of these soldering irons with different tips on each and I use them a lot. I think they are very good soldering irons. Good control and work well. I own to many soldering irons but use these a lot. I rate them. Good to see a fun hack for it lol.
Bonus writing points, Elliot, for the final pun. Well played! ????