The Pinecil is a $25 soldering iron from PINE64 that runs off any USB-C charging brick. Itʼs a surprisingly capable unit with performance that punches well above its price. (My wonderful Hakko FX-888D has seen little use since the Pinecil arrived!)

Internally it uses a BL706 RISC-V microcontroller from Bouffalo Lab, running the open-source IronOS firmware. The BL706 has a built-in Bluetooth Low Energy radio, and last week IronOS 2.21 was released adding BLE capability.

I thought Iʼd have a crack at building a companion ap