Ember

Details

External ID

46174773

Source

HN

Company

—

Product

—

Website domain

—

Launched

Dec. 6, 2025

Cohort

—

Upvotes

7

Upvotes percentile

0.35877862595419846

Tags

—

Fetched at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Updated at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

Hi, I’m Nathan, an aspiring engineer who likes to tinker with hardware. Earlier this year, I started making hardware/electronic projects through various Hack Club programs. It was perfect, but most, if not all, of my projects were being withheld due to high customs and import fees, so I wanted to change that.Most of the price was actually assembling the PCB, and looking around the internet, I discovered the wonderful invention of the hotplate, and that I could make all of my PCBs myself for more than half the cost. Now, while I could have bought one on eBay, I decided to take up the challenge of making my own (because why not) and to make it as functionally portable as possible, so Ember was born.I started reading how hotplates work and looked around the internet to see if anyone had made one, and I stumbled upon this repository (https://github.com/ikajdan/reflow-hot-plate). It was basically what I wanted to make, but reading through, I found that although it went up to 210 °C, the hotplate size was rather small. Also, it needed an external DC jack along with USB-C to be able to control/monitor it from a laptop.Features/Specs:- USB-C Power Delivery up to 100W (20V) using TI's TPS25730D- STM32WB55CG microcontroller with Bluetooth support- Large(ish) 120mm x 120mm flexible heatbed for big PCB reflow (JLCFH)- Dual temperature sensing with MAX6675 thermocouple and PT1000 RTD- OLED display with rotary encoder for easy control and preset management- NFC support (because why not lol)- Gate driver for precise PWM heatbed control- Current and board temperature monitoring for safety- 32MB Flash memory for graphics and data storage- Portable design with custom acrylic / nylon caseIf you want to see the complete journal of how I made it and all of the design decisions I made, you can check it out here: https://blueprint.hackclub.com/projects/1701Here’s the GitHub repo for anyone interested in making their own: https://github.com/notaroomba/emberThanks to Hack Club’s Blueprint for sponsoring this project!

• Source listing
• Website (no URL on record)