CFW for KSGER/Quicko STM32 Soldering Stations

[wickated]

i got offset that is like -10 cuz i have to wait some time to actuaaly get some adc output when touch cold tip.

also i need proper instruction. when should i insert cold tip for preclibration? on calibration submenu?

also finally got solid temp on screen. thanks for debouncer.

[DavidAlfa]

Again, explained in the manual! In the main calibration menu.
Otherwise it'll trigger the error detection.
It's impossible to get a negative ADC reading? Show pictures or video.
The firmware calibration code didn't change from the test build.
I only added the translations and modified the oled power modes.

[wickated]

nvm, fw is ok, i just meant that on my board smth is draining voltage. lowering opamp input on like 10 adc samples.

didnt tested well, menus, dimmng etc, on quick look everything is ok and great.

[DavidAlfa]

Still don't understand completely. Just make a video!

[wickated]

this
on other station it starts rising next second i touch tip with my thumb (i ddnt touch tip with my index finger so it lowered back to 0 after minutes)
https://youtu.be/t_6SdOsqokk

p.s. its said that entering calibration menu supress power to the tip, so i can change tip and keep it cold. but stand switch actually triggers it again.

[hanzz]

I would like to make a German translation.
Which File do I need to translate?

[DavidAlfa]

this
on other station it starts rising next second i touch tip with my thumb (i ddnt touch tip with my index finger so it lowered back to 0 after minutes)
https://youtu.be/t_6SdOsqokk

p.s. its said that entering calibration menu supress power to the tip, so i can change tip and keep it cold. but stand switch actually triggers it again.

Still don't.see the problem? Some stations will be more sensitive than others.
Will look at the stand mode, I always forget it exists...

I would like to make a German translation.
Which File do I need to translate?

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/stm32-oled-digital-soldering-station-for-t12-handle/msg3654799/#msg3654799

But the fonts don't have special german symbols.
Remember that space is very constrained.
Once you made the translation, post it here or add a pull request in github, I'll take care of the fonts.

[wickated]

sry, tested on old station, it also has some time(~3s) to actually start rising adc output when touched with finger, so i guess its just very low thermal conductivity of skin. other numers seems very same, exept 0 offset on one and 10 on other, thats still withtin opamp datasheet anyway.

p.s. also afair in very old builds when i turned active detection off, i could unplug tip, insert new one and manually started station with encoder cuz screen showed no iron until i trigger it manually. now it looks like there is passive detection and as soon as tc readings go again, station starts. this works as intended ?

[DavidAlfa]

Sorry, when you complain about the tip heating slow by the finger I just want to *** everything.
First you said it had a negative offset, got me checking the code and testing, you never showed any proof when asked... Dude!
I seriously encourage you to stop that type of complains, it's becoming really annoying.
Unless you want it for that, it's a soldering station, not an anal temperature sensor 

Fixed the stand mode, ignore changes when calibrating.
Also little changes in the calibration mode code to keep the station in run mode no matter what.

The active detection is just the 5us pulse before the ADC delay, to slightly charge up the capacitor at the input of the amplifier, so if there's no tip, it'll keep the charge when the adc reads and trigger the detection error.
If you disable it, it's supposed that you put the 1M resistor. Otherwise it'll got crazy, like most stations, error..800ºC...20ºC...error...

I don't remember old builds.
The tip connection fails sometimes, and it goes to "no iron" mode.
It would be annoying if after that the station went into sleep mode, needing to push the button.
So yes, it sets run mode when the error is cleared out.

[wickated]

sry for that. i thought i was clear enough that it was behaviour of my hardware only, and i had only little time to recheck everything and really didnt expect opamp sticking to 0 output(cuz by datasheet it should have little offset, noise from psu and so on)
i currently have too little time to do any long tests, just quick button smashing.

[DavidAlfa]

When you warm a tip with your fingers, you have to heat up the whole tip body before the sensor starts reading.
The temperatre difference between your fingers and the tip will be only 10-15ºC, and your fingers are not copper rods, the skin cools down almost instantly, so the heat transfer is very slow.
Thats why you feel the cold! This is not like touching the temperature probe, which is a 0.5mm ball weighting 0.3grams.

So, let's keep this in topic: Soldering, cherry red iron tips, burned pcb pads/traces, exploding mosfets, and such.

I modified the error delay widget, now it has 0.1s steps and allows up to 60s.
So if you wish, you can change the tip at Flash speed yet have time for preparing a tea:

[wickated]

The active detection is just the 5us pulse before the ADC delay, to slightly charge up the capacitor at the input of the amplifier, so if there's no tip, it'll keep the charge when the adc reads and trigger the detection error.
If you disable it, it's supposed that you put the 1M resistor. Otherwise it'll got crazy, like most stations, error..800ºC...20ºC...error...

I don't remember old builds.
The tip connection fails sometimes, and it goes to "no iron" mode.
It would be annoying if after that the station went into sleep mode, needing to push the button.
So yes, it sets run mode when the error is cleared out.

ah, very nice hardware hack 

things clear. i aksed just only because of jbc tip extraction algorithm - genuine have two stand switches, one is normal stand and other is for tip change, is almost same but shuts down power until u manually restart runmode. thought that was accidentally intended. no need to change behaviour, 2s iron check give actually give enough time to push new tip.

[DavidAlfa]

But here we have only one switch for all. So what  ? I have no way to detect if it was a tip change or a momentary connection error.
We can't have everything. If I lock the station after the error, people will start complaining, if I don't, they will also complain
I could add an option, ex. "After error" [Resume] [Sleep] [Run] or something like that.

[wickated]

no need to worry, i didnt complain, just always forgot to ask about behaviour change.

[DavidAlfa]

No worries, you know what are the kind of requests that annoy me (Issue #1223: Tip heats up slowly using the fingers )
This one is an useful feature .

Added "Err. mode" [SLP] [RUN [LAST]
(Error resume mode)

I noticed the error delay was not profile-specific, but system-wide.
You might need more delay for changing T12 tips than with a JBC, or the other way, so I moved it to the profile data.

Also, that delay ws not really related to not related to "NO IRON", but to any error, so I changed the label to "Error delay".

New translations needed:

      .IRON_Error_Timeout = "Err delay",
      .IRON_Error_Mode = "Err mode",
      .errMode =     { "SLP", "RUN", "LAST" },

Or maybe use a different label for."Err. Mode"?
 "After Err"?

[wickated]

i would suggest as "tip change" - "off" - "run"
since it would actually be mostly used as workaround for tip changing and "slp" wouldnt suit for both t12 and 245

when "dim all" and "screen off" enabled, it shuts when temp lowers, but dont ignite again when iron starts by switch. so i suggest "screen off" work w/o temp check cuz if iron restart user could think "screen off only when temp low so i should lick tip now nothing to worry about" 
also this makes dim "all" option useless. since screnn would only go off after full cycle slp-cooldown-run

[DavidAlfa]

Arghh, stupid miniature screens.
I got tired, I'm redesigning combo widgets to slide text, for now only for the label, not the options.
That way you could write:

"Excuse me Sir, what would you like to do after an error condition is no longer present?" [SLP] [RUN] [LAST]

[DavidAlfa]

Starting to work...

[illiac4]

Hey. I saw this post and maybe to someone like David it would also make sense and maybe will find something usefull.
https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS/issues/1038

[DavidAlfa]

Yep, I've been watching that project since long time ago.
Not interested, it's a very different project targetted for a very specific hardware, while this one needs a lot of options to maintain compatibility.
My intention is just to tweak the graphical interface to make it easier to translate.
If you have ideas for a menu layout, just let me know.

[ricktendo]

The way the new graphics look on the TS100 look amazing, they are pixel perfect.

Using images instead of text on the small TS100 LCD makes more sense, it also minimizes the need to translate.

[DavidAlfa]

Translations required anyway and they don't have 1/4 of the options. When you have only 10 options, it's easy...
But this fw needs a real menu.

[DavidAlfa]

Using long strings is actually worse because you don't have a clue what's about until it starts sliding...

Ex.

   OLED   | NOT VISIBLE
Standby Temperature
Standby Timeout
Stby temp
Stby time


Is seen as:

Standby T
Standby T
Stby temp
Stby time


It's easy to shorten words in english, but in other languages it's not.
Not sure about this... It's giving lots of new headaches.


The text is clipped to the field size, so it will look a bit weird.
I've trying different layouts using paint and a 128x64 bitmap... The hard part is to keep everything readable while properly highlighted when selected or editing.
I don't like any of them, I'm this close to ditch the translations...



Any ideas for the layout?

[wickated]

looks really cool in 1500 fps  but not necessary cuz short names look more clear when u get used to.

when "dim all" and "screen off" enabled, it shuts when temp lowers, but dont ignite again when iron starts by switch. so i suggest "screen off" work w/o temp check in "dim all" cuz if iron restart user could think "screen off only when temp low so i should lick tip right now nothing to worry about" 
also this makes dim "all" option useless. since screen would only go off at run mode after full cycle slp-cooldown-run

[DavidAlfa]

I know, that's why I prefer english for all, short and meaningful. But you're missing the point of this, it's all about the trasnlations.
If you're lucky, you'll be able to find some words in your language that fits the available space. But if not, you're screwed.
So I was trying to find a workaround for that.

What you say about the oled makes no sense.

- Dimmer [OFF (Never dim)] [SLP(Dim in low power modes)] [ALL(Dim in all modes)]
- In sleep: What to do after the screen was dimmed in sleep mode and temperature is under 100ºC.  Leave on or turn off.
                It's never turned off in any other modes, and never turns off unless the tip is below 100ºC.

Any encoder movement, wake input in shake mode, station mode change, errors change, will wake up the screen.
It's impossible that the tip heats up while the screen is off, and it's impossible that the screen stays off if something happened.


BTW the sliding text is updated every 20mS (50 times per second), it should be the same for all controllers.

In the end I added the code but kept everything as it was, the sliding text is disabled by default and can be enabled in widgets.h using "COMBO_SLIDE_TEXT" switch.
Also added drawing detection, to update the screen buffer only when needed.
It won't increase the screen performance, the iron functions are interrupt-driven, and all the remain power was used to draw the screen.
Now it just won't be updated if not needing so, freeing processing power for other future tasks, but peak framerates are still the same, limited by the bus speed.
So, in a static screen the stm32 is doing almost nothing, only updating the adc/pid/iron states.