How to build a low voltage soldering iron

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Although soldering irons are quite cheap, widely available and come in various shapes and sizes, let’s try to make one from scratch. This involves some basic knowledge of electronics and some DIY abilities. However, please note that building electrical devices carries risks, and I recommend exercising caution to fire, burns, or other hazards.

This article will describe some simple to build soldering irons that can provide 15 – 60 W and are powered at low voltage (5 – 20 V, depending on heater wire you use). This means you can power it with any power supply that meets these requirements (a computer power supply or notebook charger will be a good choice because it is also short circuit protected).

Fix boot splash screen (Plymouth) on Ubuntu

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Plymouth is the Ubuntu application that displays the graphical splash screen when booting and shutting down the system[1]. It is long known that it has problems with proprietary Nvidia drivers. While on some computers it starts in low resolution mode, on others it works in text mode. It is claimed that this happens because Nvidia drivers load at a later point and are not available for GRUB and Plymouth[2]. Usually, Plymouth uses KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) to display graphics, but with proprietary drivers you must configure it to use framebuffer instead[3].

Fix boot splash screen (Plymouth) on Ubuntu