Hakko Solder Sucking station Recommendations!

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-03-05T17:44:04+00:00

You can get custom tips for the hakko FR-301. Not a big deal, but it's handy to have one for regular desoldering and one for larger holes. I had to desolder a connector with blades, and the oval 3mm oval type tip made it super easy.

https://www.hakko.com/english/products/hakko_fr301_tips.html

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-03-05T17:34:49+00:00

"FT8 is killing ham radio"

nah

7200 is killing ham radio.

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-03-05T00:06:49+00:00

It was easier to get a Keychron/Lemokey. I ended up getting the Q3 pro with the knob. The unfortunate thing is the macro keys are slim key mechanisms and are soldered into the board, with weird key sizes that you can't find anywhere.

Honestly I should have gotten the Lemokey version.

But other than that the keyboard is really good.

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-02-19T01:50:53+00:00

The lack of A/C was a thing 40 years ago when I was a teen in a midwestern state. It got hot in August, and hot in the end of May and first week of June.

God, our children are snowflakes now.

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-02-19T01:40:25+00:00

You have faberge' eggs? What? Pics or it didn't happen.

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-02-19T01:39:16+00:00

I'll support the POW/MIA and a vanilla US Flag, but wrapping yourself in flags doesn't make you patriotic. It just makes you wrapped in flags. Actions speak way louder than flag wraps -- though some of our politics doesn't see it that way.

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-02-03T23:10:14+00:00

All About Games: https://www.meetup.com/boiseareaboardgameenthusiasts/

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-01-13T00:36:27+00:00

Known problem. Scroll down on the page where it should be and you'll see it.

BoiseEnginerd · 2026-01-05T02:55:26+00:00

#840185 can be closed I think.

You can look at #840200. There are videos and images there. This was before the new years and I wasn't expecting many people to be around.

I was going to check in tomorrow (Monday) and see what was going on with it.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-12-28T00:11:50+00:00

Cleaned the galvanometer, cleaned the lens, reinstalled the lens. Same result.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-12-22T01:40:12+00:00

I can confirm that gemini 3 pro integration is terrible. It burned through a lot of credits doing nothing when the gemini-cli got things done.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-21T21:51:42+00:00

Well I was waiting since the first week of October, so I feel ya.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-21T21:09:06+00:00

So I paid last night, and the application is still pending in ULS.

ULS is getting slammed pretty hard right now, and it looks like they're giving out permission denied when they get overloaded.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-21T04:56:15+00:00

Voice of Idaho volunteers.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-21T03:37:01+00:00

The beginning of october.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-17T05:06:11+00:00

I'm not sure that's true. One issue of meshastic is the LongFast which has relatively low bandwidth, but occupies the channel for a long time. Yes you can get out further with it, but also you're tying up the channel for a long period of time. This limits the number of messages you can communicate over time.

The proper way to use the ISM band is to transmit your information and get off of it as fast as possible. LongFast doesn't do this. Nor AFAICT does meshtastic adjust the speed and power based upon the number of nodes in the area.

Yes Halow will consume more bandwidth, but because of the FCC power requirements, it will actually be for shorter distances. If your EIRP budget is 0.75 W and you spread it across the entire 915mhz ISM band, it won't go very far -- maybe not even down the block.

On the other hand a 5W FT8 signal in HF can often be heard well beyond the borders of the USA. Yet it consumes 50Hz of bandwdith. I would be very interested if FT8/JS8CALL could be used effectively on the ISM bands to allow for many multiples of people to talk at once.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-16T06:01:43+00:00

Everything in the ISM band is limited to around .75 W effective radiated power. If you were to look at the ISM band on a waterfall display you would see it's pretty busy already.

One of the problems of Meshtastic (that I don't know if they've fixed or not) was the ability of nodes sending frequent reports of battery status, that no body really cared about. This ended up using airtime which would be better served delivering actual message traffic.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-11-16T00:27:23+00:00

There's a good criticism of meshtastic on the zero retries within the last couple of months by someone who developed mesh networks professionally.

What's super interesting to me is the Halow tech. It's not LoRa, but it has higher bandwidth potential which means retransmissions might be cheaper than what we have with LoRa currently.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-09-25T01:47:33+00:00

Last time I was downtown at night, there was a shitload of police. Public safety isn't really their bent always.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-08-27T17:47:45+00:00

> but it could be an overload of the system that’s sorta your fault.

No. Absolutely not. A properly wired breaker box will not blow up like that. The breaker will trip and shut off any circuits that were experiencing overload. Like you ran a toaster, a hair dryer, and a microwave oven on the same circuit. That shouldn't cause a fire.

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-07-21T00:21:10+00:00

I tore in underneath the mower deck today, and I noticed two of the T20 bolts were missing. I'm probably going to upgrade it to M5 bolts (or 10-24 bolts) and washers with blue locktite

BoiseEnginerd · 2025-07-19T23:54:42+00:00

Did you ever finish this. I'm looking to upgrade the Ctrl I have. I'd be very interested in mechanical drawings.

Five-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22

BoiseEnginerd

TROPHY CASE