Calibrate Temperature

[River-Mochi]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, IronOS allows you to execute "Calibrate temperature?" even if no tip is inserted. This produces a very low offset number than is not in the normal 700-1000 range.

For people who have not looked up the instructions for calibration or do not understand that the tip needs to be installed for this calibration, this leads to a very incorrect calibration and the Iron will not operate correctly (temperature on screen would not be the temperature of the tip).

Describe the solution you'd like

1. IronOS checks if tip is Installed, and not allow calibration to proceed if it detects No tip is inserted. instead of Offset number, it displays "Install Tip first"
2. Change the name from "Calibrate temperature?" to "Calibrate Tip Offset?"

Additional context
Changing the name has 3 benefits and could be done now independently of doing action 1 if that is more difficult to code.

1. Some may not look up the detailed instructions when doing calibration, and then worry that the number displayed at the end is a very high temperature. The name change woud disuade people from assuming the Offset is a number related to F/C temperatures and then worrying that there is something broken on the pinecil/firmware.
2. The new name will encourage people to ask in chat or look up details before proceeding, because "Tip Offset" requires more investigation/thought than "Temperature" (cold junction compensation is more complex and calibration could be worse if done randomly without following exact environmental steps).
3. People will not incorreclty press "Calibrate" many times in a row thinking it will be better/more precise if they do it more times when it does not. As all elements on the PCB are getting warmer, repeating the calibration many times in succession leads to Offset numbers that vary greatly and the calibration is worse than before.

[Ralim]

(1) Eugh that's a dumb bug. Will fix.

(2) Thats in the translation files for each language. Do you want to change it or shall I, also does @discip have some wisdom on this?

[River-Mochi]

If @discip is willing to give me some advice I could do it. also if he could help change some of the other languages.

1. I just have to Change it in Translation.EN file ? I'm familiar with translation html from the vietnamese one I think I remember how to do it.
2. how do people know to change it in the other 30 files to "Calibrate Tip Offset?" or do we just use google translate?

[River-Mochi]

TranslationEditor for English is displaying this error.
it shows a Length problem.
see photo. I will submit the PR with the Calibrate change, but Hall sensor need looking at if Length is too short.
I tried to shorten the long sentence a little but this did not help Hall Effect sensor.

[discip]

@river-b
@Ralim
In my opinion Calibrate Tip Offset will confuse users even more, since the term offset could also mean the distance from the farthest end of the tip to the actual iron [length of the tip] (View of a new or unexperienced user.)

So we either would need a precise menu item name like Calibrate Cold Junction Compensation, which will not fit on the screen due to its length, or we leave it as it is and add the corresponding information to the description (scrolling text).

Another idea I had was to remove the manual calibration option altogether and make the calibration to be executed on every startup in the background as long as a tip is installed. Also to be added is an option to set Auto temp calibration on or off.

[River-Mochi]

idea is for people to use calibration less.
right now we have people coming to Pine64 live chat rooms, using it 10-15 times in a row and seeing wide varience of the offset number and drawing wrong conclusions.

if it says "calibrate Tip Offset," they might stop and read the procedure in document before making Calibration worse.

Other issue we see is people wrongly assume the number at the end is temperature since it's called "calibrate temperature" and then they start a panic in the live chat saying " this is bad, pinecil is broken, showing 900 degrees message at end of calibrate temperature, this is a serious bug Ralim needs to fix this asap"
...because they did not look up instructions first, and not know the 900 is Offset number and nothing to do with °C

• hope is calling it Tip offset, they will first look up instructions or ask in chat the procedure. This is only supposed to be done if they have Temperature off of more than 5 °C and not often, since more chance of making calibration worse. and they would need to have tool to measure if the tip is way off in temperature. Or if the tips are visibly burnt or wearing out too fast, this is another sign that calibration is wrong.

"calibrate temperature" makes it too easy sounding and then people just randomly use it, thinking they know what they are doing but more often it's calibrated incorrectly which leads to worse problem.
I changed the scroll message in the Menu to make it more clear, this does not need to be done if you are "within 5 °C " which might help from excessive calibrations.

[River-Mochi]

@discip are you able to fix the translation editor tool? it's not giving enough room for Hall Sensor section which is why it shows in Red color if you use translationEditor.html on EN english one.

[River-Mochi]

@discip
@Ralim

Automatic on every re-boot is more problematic. if they were using the iron for a bit, and just unplugged to swap tips the handle and components inside would be warm. Warm handle does not meet requirements that Both handle and tip are Equal in temperature and at room/ambient temperature (for proper calibration).

I change my tips a couple times when I'm soldering to different styles all within 3-5 minutes. I might use a big tip desoldering then unplug and swap in a BC2 for soldering. the handle is warm by the time i do this.

Automatic on re-boot - would not know the environment the person is in, or if they allowed handle enough time to cool off or if they stuck in a Tip that might be a little warm sitting under some heat lamp. based on the more simple hardware we have, calibration needs some human intervention and thinking.

However, what could be done based on this idea, is make it so that you can not even do Calibration if you dont do it within a certain time of it booting up.
Ralim mentioned in Pine64 chat that even just plugging in power, the temperature starts to drift; so "if" you even need calibration, should be done on cold boot-up and not after Pinecil has been plugged in for a few minutes, and not repeatedly 8 times in a row (or there can be wide variance in offset).

[River-Mochi]

@discip
about your idea, Cold Junction also called "Seebeck Effect" since Thomas Seebeck discovered this.

could call it "Calibrate Seebeck Effect?" which displays as

Calibrate
Seebeck effect?

In English, at least, people do not use the word "offset" to describe length.
it's also sometimes called "cold junction reading" or could just be "calibrate cold junction". no need for word compensation since the calibrating we are doing is doing is the measuring & compensation as part of the formula.

[River-Mochi]

Seebeck Effect

[discip]

1. If we start to apply your principle (use cryptic names to make user look it up), than we just have to replace every menu item name with a number so people definitely will have to look up what setting they are about to change.

   Please get me right.

   There will always be people who keep making wrong assumptions due to them being lazy, including myself!

2. If the components need to be as close to room / ambient temperature as possible, we should definitely calibrate the offset as early in the boot sequence as possible.

   Btw: You don't need to power off your iron to swap the tips.

3. Seebeck Effect

   I read exactly that article.

4. I stick to my suggestion, but would like to add some more ifs to the already existing ones Calibrate Temperature #1387 (comment).
   e.g:

   • Is there a way to measure absolute time?

     Most likely not, but the idea is to log the latest temp and depending on that at boot, check if enough time has passed for the tip to cool down to room temperature and if so, calibrate the offset. Maybe @Ralim has a better solution for that.

[River-Mochi]

1. other items in menu changing is more visual changes, and does not effect operation as badly as doing calibration of the tip offset repeatedly or when it's not even needed and also not ensuring both tip and handle is equal and room temperature. This is why we get warnings often from Ralim, not to calibrate it multiple times. need to leave a lot of time for handle internals to cool off.

In V2 Pinecil we do have to unplug when swapping tips, because it auto-senses on re-boot which Tip ohm we are using since Pinecil now has both 6.2 ohm tip and 8 ohm tip (technically would not need to unplug if same ohm tip size is swapped)
I also unplug for safety when swapping tip. but V2 , it's only going to detect tip ohm on unplugging/reboot.

auto-calibrate on every reboot would be problematic because the handle or tip could be warm, the person just used it.

• In V1 pinecil, we are getting a manual menu change that allows us to manually select 6.2 ohm or 8 ohm Tip, every time we change tips since V1 does not have the hardware to auto-detect Tip on boot-up.

side note (technically these new shorter tips may work in other TS100 style irons too, but not sure, shorter tips do require more powerful charger so some people randomly trying them and not knowing this could see their iron strange behavior when using low 12v or 15v power.) we had someone today saying it's rebooting on them, sure enough they were using a weak charger.

[discip]

In V2 Pinecil we do have to unplug when swapping tips, because it auto-senses on re-boot which Tip ohm we are using

Ah, I see. Did not know that. But this is covered by 4.

auto-calibrate on every reboot would be problematic because the handle or tip could be warm, the person just used it.

That is why I wrote this:

but the idea is to log the latest temp and depending on that at boot, check if enough time has passed for the tip to cool down to room temperature and if so, calibrate the offset

[discip]

@river-b
Do you think this can be closed after all the latest changes? 😊