CFW for KSGER/Quicko STM32 Soldering Stations

[bozo]

Yellow SSD1309 problem when sleep enters.

[DavidAlfa]

Looks like the minimum brightness is on the limit for the pixel activation threshold for that screen.
Decrease the brightness option, does it also happen at any lower level?
What T12 board is it?

@Polf did it happen anytime in your yellow OLED?

[bozo]

I also have a Green SSD1309 running on that same board with no problems. Program version v2. Contrast at level 4-5 loses pixels.

[DavidAlfa]

Is it actually dim at 4-5 level, or still pretty bright with these weird patches?

Edit: Increased precharge/discharge clocks and Vcom Deselect voltage.
Does it make any difference?

[bozo]

Now contrast 10 works well. Contrast 3 is equal to sleep mode.

[wickated]

Now contrast 10 works well. Contrast 3 is equal to sleep mode.

any link for stand ? nice box design.

[bozo]

I bought a stand here.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003246855374.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000060.3.3daa3522RbUdXv&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.274681.0&scm_id=1007.13339.274681.0&scm-url=1007.13339.274681.0&pvid=629faa35-176c-46a5-92d9-52e950a7a75e&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller,scm-url:1007.13339.274681.0,pvid:629faa35-176c-46a5-92d9-52e950a7a75e,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238109%231935&pdp_ext_f=%257B%2522sku_id%2522%253A%252212000024842420455%2522%252C%2522sceneId%2522%253A%25223339%2522%257D&pdp_pi=-1%253B184.41%253B-1%253B-1%2540salePrice%253BHRK%253Brecommend-recommend

[DavidAlfa]

So it works well at all brightness levels including sleep?
Added to the repo, new builds.
Anyone having display issues with the new settings, please report!

[yelkvi]

any link for stand ? nice box design.

Very high price. I have such a stand. AIXUN T3A was equipped with such a stand.
The body is painted plastic. I don't like the mesh. I like a wet sponge. If you have locksmith skills, then you can do this yourself. Or even better. Perhaps not so pretty. But the main thing is that it works.
Aixun T3B has a good idea - they connected the stand with the soldering station with a wire. And the soldering iron handle itself is connected to the stand. It is very convenient if, for example, like mine, the soldering station is fixed above the desktop on a shelf. And on the table is a stand for a pen.

[yelkvi]

Question: What is the function of the LED at the input of the 8851 op-amp?
What voltage drop should be on it?
I have seen boards with blue LED (2.6V) and red (1.8V) LEDs.

[DavidAlfa]

Cheap way of clampling the voltage going into the amplifier input, you don't want 24V there, it works at 3.3V!
Plus it lights up when tip power is active.

[yelkvi]

Thanks. I assumed so. That is, the type of LED is not important.

P.S. I received a parcel with a HandsKit soldering station (I posted the link above). I uploaded firmware V2.x - everything works fine.

[wickated]

Very high price. I have such a stand. AIXUN T3A was equipped with such a stand.
The body is painted plastic. I don't like the mesh. I like a wet sponge. If you have locksmith skills, then you can do this yourself. Or even better. Perhaps not so pretty. But the main thing is that it works.
Aixun T3B has a good idea - they connected the stand with the soldering station with a wire. And the soldering iron handle itself is connected to the stand. It is very convenient if, for example, like mine, the soldering station is fixed above the desktop on a shelf. And on the table is a stand for a pen.

all of them exept genuine one are lightweight. but it can be fixed with some rocks put inside. jbc stand has an unique ability to lock in place all types of handles - 210,245, even 115 should fit. i definitely dont have equipment and skills to mill this metal things. outsourcing would cost same or more.

[DavidAlfa]

Ksger v3/v3.1 users, what's you screen offset? Unmodified stations (Original screens) only!

C'mon! Everyone wants support here, but when I ask something, nobody cares!
Sorry to insist, but:

Ksger v3/v3.1 users, what's you screen offset? Unmodified stations (Original screens) only!

[yelkvi]

If this board can be considered V3, then with a screen of 0.96" offset = 0, and with 1.3" = 2

[ksjh]

Ksger v3/v3.1 users, what's you screen offset? Unmodified stations (Original screens) only!

Additional to the Quecoo T12-955, I also own a completely unmodified KSGER V3.1 station.

The correct screen offset for this station is 0.

Regarding the calibration data for my KSGER V3.1, it really depends on the tip.
I tried two "identical" BC3 tips from different vendors on AliExpress. Both are new, they just went through a 30 minute burn-in cycle.

BC3 Tip 1: Cal 250°C 1073, Cal 400°C 2273
BC3 Tip 2: Cal 250°C 1309, Cal 400°C 2604

[mastershake]

ill also check i missed the post where you asked hang on a min ill go grab one and check sorry for late reply i checked three of them all are set to 0 and are perfect.

[DavidAlfa]

This is why a color LCD won't happen anytime.
It's a simple test imitating the firmware appearance, even with optimized routines, clearing the LCD and redrawing everything takes 100ms, running at 72MHz.
That's about 10frames per second in a 160x128 screen, will be slower at higher resolutions.
Also the screen image quality is terrible!
The ST7789 screen looks much better, but it's 1.14".

[yelkvi]

Yes. It doesn't look good. That's why the Chinese in Aixun T3 used a more powerful GD32F305RET6 processor.
And the picture is much better. And the animation speed is great.

P.S. Has the LCD indicator arrived yet?

[ygi]

Well, are we talking about 16 or 24bit colors? If so, wouldn't it be good enough for a soldering station to reduce that to 4bit color palette? My guess is the slow refresh rate has to do with lack of bandwidth. Granted I have no idea how realistic that is, if even feasible. Anyway, that just a thought, I'm perfectly happy with B&W display.

[DavidAlfa]

You can't go 4bit, these display allow 12-bit as lowest, that would be even slower as you have a weird pixel arragement (a pixel is 1.5bytes) needing a lot of cpu power and limiting a lot the dma capabilities.

Anyways, the problem is the spi bus itself, a parallel LCD would do the same transfer at least 16x faster, if not even more when using the memory controller peripheral (no spi clock limitations).
Thus, it's impossible to wipe the screen and redraw it fast enough, it will always cause a small flickering.
Don't expect this ever on cfw, I was only being curious, drawing some stuff!

Some numbers so you can see clearly the limitations:
Oled 128x64:
- Frame buffer size 1024bytes
- Can be stored in the ram, and quickly transferred in a single shot.
- Theorical speed with 18MHz SPI: 2197fps

LCD 160x128:
- Frame buffer size 40960bytes
- Needs a lot of RAM, most mcus won't be able to store it, requiring modifying the LCD memory, slow and causes artifacts.
- Theorical speed with 18MHz SPI: 55fps

Of course, theorical speed is nowhere from real. You must process the fonts, address the pixels... there's a lot of overhead.
Clearing the LCD is also a frame, so, you can transfer in the best case 27 "real" fps, the screen will show the black frame due the slowness and look terrible.
That's why I laught at these Arduino projects where you see the screen drawing taking 3 seconds! It's so crappy

There're some tricks, but doesn't worth the time with spi and crappy LCDs.

Yelkvi, didn't arrive yet. No news since 26-february.

[wickated]

do stm support any other bus for screens?
i have a big station with this size of screen and it works wo any lag. actually didnt disassemble it, it should work on generic arm M series cpu

[DavidAlfa]

Of course they do.
STM32 F3/F4 series have F(S)MC, Flexible (Static) Memory Controller, can be used to interface memories, but also any other device using the 8080/6800 bus standard like a majority of those small parallel LCDs (D0-D15,WR,RD,RS...), example, FMC+DMA would be crazy fast.

However, it takes a ton of pins and routing, no less than 20, that's why these SPI things exist, it's cheap and simple.
Probably, even driving the parallel screen by manually toggling pins will be faster, since a single write pulse transfers one pixel, while in SPI it takes 16 spi clocks, which run at 1/2 or 1/4th the core speed, so it's 32-64 cpu clocks per pixel.

I further optimized some DMA routines, got the 103 to write the same screen in 51ms(transparent font) and 34ms(normal font). That's wiping+filling, with a peak of 110fps.
The 32F411 running at 144MHz can do it in 21ms(transparent) and 14ms(normal), with a peak frame rate of 220fps.
Yet, you can be as fast as you want, there's no way to read scanline or provide Vsync in these cheap displays, so part of the black (screen wipe) is shown, and then the new content, causing the flicker.

The only difference is the 411 has 128K SRAM and could store the framebufer (40KB), reducing the display tearing...
That way tearing is a lot better:YouTube
But 160x128 is crap and bigger screens (ex. 320x240) won't fit unless completely changing the hardware, not the target of this fw.
Enough testing! This screen is awful, don't buy it

[bozo]

SSD1309 Yellow goes out after a long test (solder and all vibration sensor and stand functions).
When you restart SSD1309 works (sometimes it takes 2-5 times to work).

[Polf]

Hardware KSGER v.2.1s display OLED 2.42" spi/i2c SSD1309 with the latest firmware of David works fine, no artifacts and problems.