How to tell if Pinecil is a FAKE Copy #1257
Replies: 15 comments 27 replies
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Official real pinecils at:
Authorized resellers:
Pine64 Community update: As of July 2022, there are no more genuine Pinecil V1 units available (sold out) and no more V1's will be made. All Pinecils V1 you may see available now on large web-stores are not legitimate. New V2 models will have a built-in feature to check authenticity. Authentic Pinecil V2 & Box:
Older model Pinecil V1 & Box looked like this below:No longer sold after July 2022.
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What could I do if I got a Counterfeit?If you bought a Counterfeit, and thought you were getting a genuine Pinecil made by Pine64, you could try to get a refund from AliExpress. These are just some ideas based on the policies they have, and not sure if this will work. It's a long shot and takes some effort. AliExpress has a program with 3 methods: Another way to help prove your case in general in AliExpress is if you wrote a message chat to the seller before purchase and asked them if they guarantee that this is a genuine Pinecil made by Pine64 company? If they said yes, and you saved it, if you got a blue or red box with Pine64 logo, and other evidence, then you could file a case with AliExpress that you received a counterfeit, but the seller told you in chat pre-sale that it was Genuine made by Pine64. (2) If there is a 75-day Buyer Protection warranty listed under the Buy Now button, then you could try to process claim using that, details here.. (3) Only buy from sellers that have the "Guaranteed Genuine" warranty - AliExpress promises full refund if it has that marking, and you get a Counterfeit. I have not seen any vendor on AliExpress participating in the Guaranteed Genuine program, the Logo would be underneath the "Buy Now" button.
(4) Some sellers on Aliexpress are doing something else equally sneaky to try to get out of a Dispute. Pine Store is required to publicly show that the FCC/ROHS /CE stamps that are on the Pinecil and the box are real; therefore they put all the Certificates on the Pinecil Wiki page. Anyone can download the certificate in link above. (5) Could point out to AliExpress the statement right at the top of the Pinecil Wiki page that all Aliexpress Pinecil are fake as Pine64 has no authorized resellers there . (6) There is also a statement in the February 2022 PIne 64 Updates. |
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Clone gets cloned :) P.S.: yeah i know Pinecil is not 100% TS100 clone as it has slightly different look and it integrates TS80 PD/QC option. But still it's a clone as anyone who had no experience with TS100 would say. |
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I think you need to be careful calling the Pinecil a clone; a lot of people put a lot of time into designing it for the open-source community. 😄 Nothing on it was cloned, it was a ground up design. The main problem with the "clone" Pinecils is that they generally have no QC performed so some have had failures after being turned on. I cant defend your experience with their store; All the product I've bought when not back ordered have shipped within two weeks and arrived (before all of this I used a lot of their older products). FWIW: I'm not paid by Pine or anything here, I just have a preference for a company that releases the files open-source and answers my emails than one that changes the main MCU without any warning 😁 I would much rather people buy non-official Pinecils than the SQ001 or the TS100 though; since at least then your getting a more useful device 😁 But I do hope that the firmware works well for you and that it performs well; since thats the "real" goal here :) |
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Sure, it's not direct clone as i've stated. But it's hard to deny it looks pretty much exactly as TS100 and re-uses tips from TS100. And if you will ask Miniware if Pinecil a clone then they will tell "definitely". Pinecil is better by functions as it uses Type-C instead of MiniUSB and it can be used as power supply. I like it, but it's still a clone with some evolution. They could make a differently looking case. There were no TS100-like cases before TS100, so it's unique design. They could use other tips, but they simply used TS100 design. What they did is migrated to Chinese STM32 clone called GD32. Of course they would eager to cooperate with you as developer of already working firmware, so they don't need to spend the time for FW development. It's just usual iteration where invention is copied to a cheaper components with minimum R&D involved. Those unofficial stores selling clones probably are the same devices made from same molds and assembling factories. You know, group of Chinese people running the company often get split to a separate companies making same devices. It's also possible that Pinecil is not the original manufacturer. So that unknown OEM factory may give devices to other sellers. Thank you for great IronOS firmware! |
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I would be wary of what you state there; you seem to be making a few assumptions.
The case started off far more different, but evolved back towards this style after a fair bit of user testing.
There are plenty of products out there with a similar styling of design, TS100 is just very well known.
They wanted a RISC-V CPU rather than arm; GD happened to be a good vendor. Its not a clone of the stm32 like the GD crap Miniware is using now. It also has a lot less peripheral bugs than the GD STM32 clones. The
Keep in mind that some of the features in the Pinecil are the result of that collaboration. I dont think they spent that much less R&D. A bit less on staff sure (I'm not paid), but also thats exactly how they roll to keep hardware costs low.
Its possible, its being actively investigated as its not allowed by how things were arranged.
I can confirm that Pinecil is the original; I've worked with the designers and had my changes put in there.
Always glad it works well for people 😁 |
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the Pinecil is open source firmware and Open schematic, anyone can go ahead and make a clone since it's open. But they need to put their own name and logo on it. What these people did is illegal, they stamped the Pine64 name and Pinecone logo all over the products to trick people into thinking they are buying real Pine64 and supporting the Pine64 community. I don't know if you know anything about Pine64 community but it's a bunch of techy people volunteering and working on Open source designs. This is what keeps products like Pinecil at $26. Pinecil is not a clone of TS100, it was built from ground up to use IRonOS. and there are many Irons that existed before TS100 that all have the Pencil shape because that makes sense for soldering iron you hold in your hand. Ordering from pine64 store is another issue, they are small business. emails are slow and sometimes you have to be persistent emailing them to see where your order is and sometimes you don't get reply for a few days because they are overwhelmed with orders. My section was to help people who actually want to buy a Pine64 brand Iron get that product. if you have an issue with their customer support, then you need to contact Pine Store email. Your commentary soapbox has nothing to do with my post which is helping the community avoid clones since we had a lot of discussion and issues on it in the Pinecil discord/matrix/telegram/IRC chat rooms. And it's rude to use my guide as a place to vent your issues/anger that has nothing to do with my write-up. This is not the discussion for that. You don't even own a Pine64 Pinecil from what you are saying, so have some sensibility and take your venting somewhere else, it just makes you look bad.
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And now the Pinecil v1 is discontinued. The new Pinecil v2 comes with a teal silicone grip, anti-counterfeiting measures. Probably a bar code on the box? From https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/07/29/pinecil-v2-soldering-iron-gets-bl706-bluetooth-le-risc-v-mcu-usb-pd-epr-support/ |
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I think https://eleshop.de/pinecil-smart-mini-tragbarer-lotkolben.html should be added to the Official real pinecils at list as Authorized resellers. |
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They were checked out and are added to the list on Pinecil Wiki now. thanks |
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I asked Pine64 for an official list of resellers. They are putting all of this effort into stopping clones, but don't have a list of where to buy real ones. Hopefully they can fix this. I can see where they would want to sell them all direct to maximize profits. But they are out of stock so often they should give us a list of alternative sources to purchase them from. |
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Sales Pine 64 sales@pine64.org Dear Joe, Thank you for your message. Eleshop has ordered Pinecil-BB2 from Pine Store. Regards, |
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thanks for checking |
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It looks like they are legit. At least for model BB2. I was impressed how fast sales@ping64.org got back with me on it. |
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I let people in the Pine64 Pinecil discord know about Eleshop.eu they have Pre-orders which will ship Sept 30 it says. Mr. Pepe from discord has placed an order to test if they are legit also. Right now they only seem to carry Pinecil V2, the red usb-C cable, and the small soldering stand from Pine64. They do not have the PinePower Desktop. |
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official list of resellers is on store website also now: I recommend using the Wiki list here because it's more more details on each vendor, what country they ship from, where they ship to, etc. : https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil#Where_to_buy_a_Pinecil |
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It looks like this is the new Pinecil V2 Authenticity Checker web site. https://pinecil.pine64.org It looks like they have implemented a S/N in hardware or something. Possibly much like PC CPU chips have. |
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yes Checker is new
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Yes. Also, if they have 100 units registered with the same S/N they can ban it. I hope they figure out a good S/N scheme. Something like make them very long and random with any character. Nothing incremental. Or simple, and only units with SN divisible by 31 with no remainder. I'd have fun with this problem :) Make Iron OS verify the SN using an API that reaches out to Pine64 during the flash. If it's not genuine then brick it or make it's screen scroll Fake Clone, auto turn on it's bluetooth with an ID of I-Love-Butt-Secs :) |
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Every device should have a unique ID programmed into the device + we burn random validation data in at factory time. Only if both of those pairs match does it pass. When the pinecil flasher is integrated for Pinecil V2 (WiP) most likely this will be checked; though I doubt we will brick them. Not that mean :) |
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Work in Progress |
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Maybe just upgrade them to V 0.80 Beta :) |
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Is it possible to ship an original one to Russia? I suppose getting a clone is the only real way to buy this hardware there. Is the hardware different between original one and the clones by the way? |
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Pinecil wiki shows several retailers, maybe try all of them to see. Some people said in the Pine64 chat, they are using some kind of 3rd party shipper, I don't know how that works. Aliexpress is selling a clone copy of the V1 old version. it will not be the V2 new one with the BL706 MCU. |
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Given the number of faults with clones, my theory is that they are factory rejects. There is no real good support for shipping to Russia due to the international sanctions due to the countries current actions. Its hard for a lot of companies to ship directly to you as of present sadly. |
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I thought I might share my experience here because it could be useful. I accidentally ordered a Pine64 Pinecil from FMchip Global (even linked above as an example for fakes) from AliExpress during black friday sales. Knowing not much about the issues with counterfeits and the Pinecil in general, I was just hearing from friends that this is a good beginners iron and even open source, I didn't do much research and ordered it. After I received the iron, everything looked well made in a steardy blue box. I tried it and everything seem to work effortlessly. Since it is open source, I thought I might want to make a firmware update and suddenly I stumbled across this post here and the wiki. I noticed I could check the legitimacy of the iron maybe by the internal ID. Turns out, I couldn't find the ID. Now I started to become suspicious that I actually ordered a counterfeit. And indeed, following this post, I noticed it is the number one example for spotting fakes. Blue box, blue plastic, on AliExpress. While I had a perfectly working iron, I felt bad for accidentilly ordering a counterfeit of an otherwise nice open source product. So I decided to challange it and opened a dispute. Note that disputes have a limit of 500 characters. Here is my text:
And I added a photo from my box. Now the funny part starts. AliExpress took less than 24h (on a Saturday) to offer me a full refind and tag my complain as valid. And I should keep the counterfeit. It actually took me longer to accept their offer because I wasn't familiar with the process on their website. Meanwhile, however, the shop owner contacted me and presented me chinese documents that should proof the legitimacy of his shop. He goes on by explaining that the majority of people buy from AliExpress instead of the bad Pine64 website so the makers spread fake news about AliExpress stores. But all of his products are legit. Notice that he did not show the certificates from the Pine64 wiki but actual chinese documents with stems, such as this one here. Someone with decent chinese skills could maybe explain what this is. He also presented me screenshots from the inside showing the PCB with Pine logo. Unfortunately, I couldn't find nice PCB shots from legit irons so it at least looked like an original PCB to me: I explained that I cannot confirm the authenticity of his documents, since my chinese is pretty poor. So I said, if his story is really true, why bothering with changing the housing to blue. All he needs to do is a black version and nobody would even notice its a fake. He responded with a video (looked like just made for me) where he shows that the blue box (I assume he misunderstood housing with the blue box) is much steardier than the original one. He showed a red box which was "taken from the window" and original. He hammered on both boxes to show that his new blue box is much better in protecting the iron. In his own words:
I said, I don't care about the blue box, the plastic housing is blue and that's a counterfeit and I shared the picture from this post here. He answered:
So I had enough of that at this point. While debating in the chat, as mentioned above, AliExpress already offered a full refund and didn't requested to send the iron back. Just the refund. So I feel a little better now knowing that I have not only stolen some time from a counterfeiter but even took his product from him without paying. I may go and buy an original now but I am not sure what to do with the fake. Maybe I use it to train my soldering skills by taking of components from the counterfeit with the original :) PS: Maybe someone here knows if this is actually a legit PCB? |
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Last time that same store tried to use the CE and other certification pages that are downloadable right from the Pinecil WIKI page. (2)What they showed you is Not a receipt that they bought it from Pine64. Pine64 Store and the CEO TL Lim has told us that Aliexpress ones are fake. Ask them to have TL Lim, the owner of the Pine64 store to tell us directly. He is in the Pine64 Discord chat with us some days (not often but he peeks into the community chat). He has a telegram accound and that is bridged into Discord chat. Pinecil Wiki has links if you want to join the community chat for Pinecil. That document they are showing you does not mean anything. It's also right in the Pine64 February 2022 Community Updates you can google and is linked above. Pine64 has never made a blue pinecil, and has never sold V1 models in anything but a Black box with a clear plastic window. They also stopped manufacturing that model a long time ago. Only the V2 model is made now, it is Black with a Green silicone grip. (3) Pine64 store has stated very clearly to us that If you want to, ask them for the CEO of the Company TL Lim to tell us directly (from his legit Telegram account) since he puts out a message to us at least once every couple weeks about some new single board computer or something related to pine64 research. That isn't going to happen since he knows about these Aliexpress stores which is partially why they upgraded and changed the V2 model (green grip) pine64.com store. 6.) everything is in the Pinecil Wiki about that if you would like to read it. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil#Authenticity We have found that the fake copies are often copies of older version of the PCB. I am interested if you get chance to take Photo of both sides of the PCB macro. Since we kind of know that real Pine Store tweaked the PCB layout a few times without actually changing that 20201020 number ( which more refers to the Schematic and not anything significant). if you joing Pinecil community chat, or general Pine64 live chat, you will see TL _Lim say things every now and then ( head of the Pine Store).
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Sorry, for the slight delay. I opened my version and took some pictures. It is rather difficult to read the chip IDs but I tried my best here. The PCB ID is slightly different from the one that the seller showed me. Mine is a bit newer:
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@AndreG-P List of Legit sellers of V2 Pinecil here on the Wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil#Where_to_buy_a_Pinecil
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Someone in Live community Pine64 chat look at that "letter" in chinese. It is not signed, it looks like something someone just typed it up and then copied in a Pinecone logo. They claim in that "document" that Pine store authorized "Shenzhen Dingtaida Technology Co." to use the trademarks and logos. The document lacks any legal certifications, it might just be another fake. FMChip Global operates under the business name of "Shenzhen Fengmei Electronic Co.,Ltd." So the document says some other company, NOT them, has permission to use the Pine Store logos/trademarks. don't have any more information. I have no idea how that document, even if it were real would help "FMCHIP Global" fake copy seller at all since it is:
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@AndreG-P could you ask them about that letter, who is "Shenzhen Dingtaida Technology Co." Then we could let Pine Store know that it is "Shenzhen Dingtaida Technology Co." that is making and selling all the fake copies to Aliexpress resellers. FMChip has shown no proof they bought it from Pine Store/aka TL Lim. I looked up "Shenzhen Dingtaida Technology Co" which their dubious document refers to and it's not a company that makes soldering irons.
gets fishier and fishier |
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@river-b I send an email as you suggested. Apart from the document above, they also showed two other documents which I share below. Each of these documents is for "Shenzhen Dingtaida Technology Co." and not for "Shenzhen Fengmei Electronic Co.,Ltd.". I somehow cannot believe they make such a stupid mistake considering that AliExpress is organized by Chinese people so they should be able to understand the documents easily. On other hand, never underestimate the stupidity of people. Could you also kindly tell me how you write "Shenzhen Dingtaida Technology Co." in Chinese? I only found this writing: "深圳市鼎泰达科技有限公司" but the fourth character 鼎 is different from the document 顶. But both characters are pronounced "Ding". I don't speak Chinese so could it be that Dingtaida is just a different pronunciation of Fengmei? As I said, I cannot believe they are so stupid in uploading 3 separate documents as proofs that show a different company. If they were hoping I give up because I cannot speak Chinese, ok. But they provide this as proof to AliExpress, a Chinese company! Surely this cannot work. PS: And yes, I noticed the "certified" logo has a horizontal bar at the bottom that is missing from the original pine logo.
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Second document looks like just a Phone message. which doesn't mean anything. I have no idea who that Phone message is from. You can tell them that TL Lim is the official CEO of Pine Store. They told us that all Aliexpress ones are fake copies. Ask them also why Pine Store Announced to the whole world in July 2022 that they discontinued all old V1 product line and anyones seen for sale in the world would all be fake copies. It's probably a good idea to send it all to Pine Store and let them know you want to alert TL Lim. |
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I have a question. I odered the blue replacement shell on aliexpress. Will it fit a legit pinecil v2? I was hoping it would since blue is my fav color and i took a chance. Thanks for any input |
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V1 and V2 use the same plastic handle shell. Read wiki page here https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil |
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@AndreG-P I think it's funny that they took the PDF from the Pinecil Wiki page and printed it out to go with the fake copy of pinecil. and to add, that fake copy can not* do bluetooth BLE and has a completely different MCU (main computer chip) than the V2 Pinecil. it does not have any of the capabilities of Pinecil V2, it can not do PD3.1 usb-C chargers. |
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Hi. I live in Russia. I want to buy the original PINECIL. But I can't pay with a Russian credit card. How can this be solved? I want to support the developers. And I don't want to buy a fake |
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On Pine Store you can pay with crypto or PayPal. |
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I'm sorry, but I don't know how to use the crypt. And pay pal is not available in Russia |
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Hello. It's quite off-topic since this problem is not [only] Pine-related but since we're here... Short answer - unfortunately, it's just impossible. Long answer - by using common sense & precautions, there are few options:
Good luck. |
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How to avoid Fake counterfeit Pinecils
● If you see red or blue boxes, they are Counterfeit and not authentic Pine64 Pinecils. Nefarious businesses have copied the entire Pinecil & PCB and printed the pine cone trademark on devices/PCB. They put Pine64 on photos to trick people. Red & blue boxes are not the the "new" version of the black box. PINE64 has always used the black box for V1. As of July 2022, PINE64 discontinued all Pinecil V1 with the GD32VF103 chip. PINE64 announced in July 2022 Updates that all official resellers and main global store is completely sold out of Pinecil V1, and it will not be produced again. Only Pinecil V2 will be made and sold from Aug 2, 2022 onward. If you see any Pinecils sold on any world websites that are not the V2 with the BL706 MCU, then they were not made by PINE64, they are illegally using the PINE64 company name and Pinecone logo. A list of aithorized PINE64 resellers is below. If you are not sure about a company, you could try email the official company, sales@pine64.org to verify whether the vendor has purchased Pinecils directly from PINE64 and is a legit reseller. So far the feedback from PINE64 is the short list below.
● They cost more or same as authentic pinecil. Clones are not supported due to dubious manufacturing. Best to report the fake clone to AliExpress & return it if you get issues when you receive it.
● Pine64 has never made a blue one (all blue are fake). Red ones are suspect as red was only sold as a spare shell color and not as a full Pinecil. Please don't support pirated pinecils as it takes resources away community driven devices which is the mission of Pine64.
● Authentic Pinecils V1 are black color with blue grip and come in a black box with a clear window. They do not come in full blue or full red colors. Even the add-on red shell case has not been sold by Pine64 for at least 9+ months.
● If you are past the return window, and your clone doesn't work right,community volunteers could try to help you troubleshoot in the Pine64>Pinecil channel which is in discord and accessible by a bridge to telegram & matrix also. But it is sketchy since it was not made under Pine64 supervision.
● If they try to show some official looking CE/FCC/ROHS certificates, just know that those same exact documents are all publicly available on the official Pinecil Wiki page under Certifications. Official PINE64 publishes this on Pinecil Wiki as these are safety certifications required to sell Pinecil in different countries and are public information that anyone can download.
Official real pinecils at:
AliExpress stores selling fake clones:
● Reference Pine64 official February 2022 Blog for write-up on counterfeits.
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