Upgrading your Pinecil’s firmware on macOS

I’m aware there’s a GUI firmware updater tool, but as of this writing doesn’t support IronOS v2.16 which has moved from .bin/.hex to .dfu files which the firmware updater doesn’t yet support. Here’s a way you can update your Pinecil’s firmware without it. Frankly it’s so easy I might keep using this method going forward. Install dfu-util dfu-util can be installed via Homebrew. I won’t go over how to install Homebrew, but after you get it on your system, run the following: brew install dfu-util Download IronOS and decompress it The Pinecil runs IronOS, the latest release can be downloaded …

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Clever batteries

We have a few EGO batteries lying around and I found two of the 7Ah batteries on the shelf today with their indicator rings red and fully lit. It wasn’t necessarily the lights alone that worried me although red usually means bad, it was that the tops of the batteries were a little warm. Oh no I thought, there’s something wrong with the batteries! It took a bit of googling to find that this was normal behavior for EGO batteries. They apparently self discharge when they detect long term storage of a fully charged battery. So I dug into the …

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Debian arm64 and UTM on Apple M1 Macs

Debian 11 arm64 cd image boots and installs just fine under UTM (QEMU) on an Apple M1 Mac, but when the VM reboots you’ll be thrown to the UEFI screen instead of seeing the usual GRUB boot menu with no clue as to what the problem might be. Here’s a workaround that will let you boot from the install disk again. Go to Boot Maintenance Manager Boot Options Add Boot Option Select the volume, it should be the only volume there Select EFI Select debian Select grubaa64.efi Give the Boot Option a description Commit your changes Now go back and …

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Stealthmount for the Makita DC18RC charger

I reached out to Stealmounts to find out if their mounting brackets for the Makita dual charger (DC18RD) fit the single charger (DC18RC). Their answer was that it does not, although they tell me that there’ll be one out in the next couple of months.

My thoughts on the myCOOLMAN 69L Dual Zone fridge

So recently we came back from a camping trip and unpacked as we always do, this time to find leftovers waterlogged with melted ice. I’ve been hinting to the wife that having a fridge would be beneficial in this regard but it wasn’t until that last trip that she agreed to it. Woo! Time to go shopping. There are quite a few options around, the Engels, Waeco/Dometics, Snomaster, Evakool, ARB etc, and newest kid on the block myCOOLMAN. Yeah i’ve never liked the way they capitalise the branding but anyways. I guess you can think of this article as a …

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