Hi, yes, it's time to look at another USB microscope for soldering work and all that sort of stuff. figurers. Well, today's SMD stuff quite difficult to sold out really just by eye. It's really handy to have either an optical or in this case a USB microscope.

We've got the do it-yourself in: Hong Kong uh USB microscope. They sent this to me after they saw my uh previous USB microscope ones which I'll link in down below. they are the really cheap ones like the $50 ones. this one about $240 full HD Big working distance on a reasonable decent stand.

same as the Anden star uh stand I had before, but we'll have a look at that and well, how much you know? is it any good for 240 bucks And we'll also compare it to one that costs 10 times more. Not a fair comparison, but anyway, you can see one of these do it yourself. Uh, hacked ones with the Microsoft uh life cam on it compared to a really professional one. Hey, let's give it a go.

So these two ones you've seen in a previous video I mean these little things are all over eBay and they're just absolute garbage. Just don't bother with those, right? Um, this Andon star one. We found out in the previous video this one wasn't bad at all for the you know, a sub $100 microscope. but it's still not a huge working distance.

but at least it was a usable USB microscope. Uh, you know, uh for soldering work and it came with this nice adjustable stand. Well, what do it-yourself in Hong Kong have done is they've modified a top-of-the-line full HD Microsoft Lifecam Studio Webcam That's the that's the actual webcam. it actually comes on the with that uh thing there.

They've Uh custom made a a pretty dodgy looking aluminium bracket on here, but hey, it works and they've taken one of these stands same as well. very similar to the Anden Star one over here. They've modified that, raised it up and the and they've added a custom lens on the front which we'll take a look at and the result is a supposedly a full HD USB Webcam is treated by the PC as a Microsoft life cam so all the drivers are there. It just plugs in instantly, but it's got the additional lens on here which gives it a 15 cm working distance 150 mm.

Beautiful! That's what you want for soldering and it's on a slight angle. You can adjust the angle of of course you can have it straight down. but and it's also got a lead custom lead light source on the front. So anyway, um, just the form factor is not bad at all.

Pretty much exactly ideal what you want for today's surface mount soldering stuff. So here it is up close. What he's basically done is taken out the Microsoft uh lens in there and replaced it with a custom lens on the front here which you can't adjust. by the way, this is all fixed uh, focus and fixed Zoom So you only get one zoom level and one uh Focus distance on the thing, but I added a board in there with some lead lights as well which work reasonably well.

Onoff switch for the lead light, but apart from that, it's just. oh, put his own sticker on there. Apart from that, it is just an A Proper Microsoft Lifecam Studio thing. It's even got the mic on the top there, of course, so you could record uh audio with it.

it's you know, nothing's been modified in that uh aspect and it's just been bolted onto a custom aluminium frame like this. so you can actually tilt it at an angle like that and use it. But I'm going to use it directly or most people use it directly straight down and typically at an angle like that just to sort of move the object. you want to work just out from the bottom of plate here, but anyway, it's not too bad.

The adjustment here is really tight. I Don't know if it's just my one, but gez it's You know it's not easy to move this up and down, that's for sure. But anyway, you know it's not bad considering that these are all uh, you know, customade and it's only 240 bucks and certainly not made in bulk. and it's not a consumer product.

It is all handmade and of course it's totally unfair. but I will actually compare the output to this Tano which costs more than 10 times the price of this thing. If you have to ask, don't you can't afford it? Probably certainly not for hobbies use. This is probably the industry's best.

Uh, Professional Full HD Uh, 1920x, 1080, 60 frames per second Fantastic Low light. it's got full Zoom Check this out. Just absolutely insane. 30 time zoom.

It's got direct HDMI output for the monitor, so I'm getting that updated at 60 times per second on there. Fantastic. Just brilliant. And it's got USB 3.0 to stream your PC as well.

Unfortunately, haven't got this fully working recording on the PC cuz I need a much more powerful PC to seamlessly record full HD at 60 frames per second and I'm working on that and I'll do a future video on that. But anyway, Um, yeah, no contest whatsoever because this thing just allows me to zoom from. You know that right in to 30 times optical zoom. Just absolutely incredible.

And I'm displaying that on a 24in monitor at 60 frames per second. Oh, this thing's just gorgeous. But what you get for, you know, 240 odd bucks? Is it any good? Unfortunately, see the problem is this: Tano microscope connects directly to a HDMI monitor direct HDMI output on there so there's no need for a PC. No lag or anything like that, it just works on a monitor.

Absolutely brilliant. Can't be beat. Unfortunately, these type of USB microscopes have to go through a PC so the update rate is going to depend on the Speedy of PC and the amount of light you get and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, let's plug it in, give it a try.

Oh, by the way, do it yourself in Hong Kong Uh, not only sell the full one as you see here, but they sell just the mod kit as well. I.E Just the lens and the little lead board so you can if you've got your own uh, lifecam Studio webcam. You can hack it for only 50 bucks so that's good value. And because it's important, you need to know what PC I'm running this on.

This is the most powerful one I've got in the lab here at the moment until I get a new dedicated PC for the Tagano microscope. so I may revisit this in the future once. I get a better PC But this one is certainly no slouch as far as uh notebooks are concerned. I Used to do all my HD video editing on here.

It's a HP DV7 model dual dis uh solid state hard drive for the windows uh 7 Operating System Intel Core I7 processor running at 2 gig I believe it is or 2.2 or something like that. um Intel Radon uh graphics card. It's a 670 M chipset for the mobile chipset. Yeah, it's not, you know, huge big gamer machine, but hey, you know it's it's certainly no slouch that's for sure running Windows 7 64-bit Pro So you know it, it's going to.

It's a reasonable machine that people might have around for this sort of use. And please forgive me for filming the screen directly. I Couldn't be bothered setting up my video capture for this, um, screen capture Anyway, it meets the requirements. Uh in the Microsoft Lifecam? uh, specs here for 720P HD recording, you know it only needs 2 G Ram Intel dual core 3 gig.

Well, I've got a uh, you know, a quad core uh 2 gig. but I've also you know 2 Mega higher video memory I've got at least a in a AMD Radeon 670 M chipset so it should be okay. And here's the trick. Here's the specs.

I mean it. Yes, it is full HD 920x 1080, right? But but uh, up to 30 frames per second? up to in quote marks. Okay, so it's going to vary and remember, this is only USB 2. Okay, the Tano has USB 3 through it for a reason CU it's trying to get full HD at 60 frames per second and it does it.

So USB to oh, we're struggling anyway. I've got it plugged in to a Usb3 port so there should be absolutely no issues there at all. And the driver side of things, you just plug it in and auto installs Uh comes up as a Microsoft Lifecam Studio which is of course, exactly what it is now just as a bit of a benchmark here, I will show you the tagano microscopes first. So I'm using uh Ukam 6 software which is pretty much the fastest uh capture program I've been able to find here and you can see it does update.

Uh, the Tano is only outputting in full HD at 60 frames per second as I said. so that look that is absolutely beautiful, but I can't record that unfortunately. So if I hit that record button there, it's all going to go to buggery. But as you can see the display updating.

So this Hardware this notebook. oh there we go. It just froze. It does freeze occasionally, but then it should come back.

So this Hardware I'm using this notebook is capable of actually at least uh, bringing in that data at that 60 frames per second and updating the screen. There we go, it's jerked. It seems that. well, there we go.

it's come back good again. So I'm not exactly sure what the exact issue there. Well, the machine's obviously not quick enough, but it should be more than enough for the full HD 30 frames per second. We're going to get on the do-it-yourself in Hong Kong one.

So let's switch to the device and by the way, that glare I was getting along there, that wasn't an issue with the Tano that's actually my overhead uh, lab lights here actually doing that I can cover it. There you go, you can see so that's not the true uh lighting performance of the of the tagano. So as you can see, the tagano is only available in one resolution. full resolution, 60 frames per second.

No other options whatsoever, but we can now choose our Microsoft Lifecam, Studio and Wham we're in. Look at that. we're in like Flynn There's our watch and as you can see, it's well. that's the B that.

We only have one zoom level here and this is the first issue with this thing. microcurrent board. but look at that right. the zoom level is is pretty good.

I Mean that's that's more than good enough for doing most SMD work. but it is fixed. So if I raise this thing up and there's not like another focal distance there at all. Um, it's just the one fixed level, That's it.

There's no Zoom whatsoever. that working distance there is about 140 mm so close to the claimed 150 mm. This is the other thing I found I Couldn't get the focus by having something flat on my bench there. Let's I'll put a blank board on there and see if we can focus on it.

So what I've got is one of my micro rulers down there. I've got it on minimum. Absolute. That's the other thing you can't just my one as I said.

A little bit stiff. so I've got to hold that when I'm doing it. but I've got it on the lowest setting, lowest height right down there. and if you take a look, it can't actually focus on that.

so that is a real issue. it can't It's that minimum height needs to be just a little bit more. I've got to raise that up before I actually get that in Focus I've got to raise that up about 10 15 mm before it starts getting within the focus range. and they claim that the depth of field is about 10 mm and well, I think that's about right.

I'm lifting that up and down there. and the depth of the field. Of course, the depth of the field is defined as where you you know lose focus Point Well in in this case, we'll Define it as sort of where we lose focus. so I can adjust the height of that by about 10 mm and it still stays in Focus So that's pretty good actually.

10 mm depth F filled is pretty excellent for something like this. And what that means in practice is that when you got large components like this, the top of the component is still in focus and the bottom uh, board, the bottom component down there is also in Focus So you really need a good depth of field. There's nothing worse than a microscope like this with a very what's called shallow depth of field. Only a couple of millimeters.

It's really horrid, so this one is really good in that respect. Almost ideal for surface mount soldering. This is actually really good. Really clear, very nice quality, and we'll check to see if there's any Ed Edge Distortion Here the way you can do that is just get your square board of course and well, does it look square? is it does it like Barrel up like that or concave in like that? Is there any? Distortion No.

Um, in fact I'm that's not a true test cuz I've got this one at an angle you can see. That's not the case. but if I point it straight down and put it in there. Yep, no problems whatsoever.

There's no distortion on this thing, so it's a very nice webcam. and of course the add-on Optics it's all about those add-on Optics and well, they do a really good job. No Distortion there very clear image I Love it. So there you have it.

I've zoomed that out to full screen and well, that is very, very usable. That's probably an ideal sort of uh magnification there. As I said, you can't adjust it, but that's good enough for most. SMD Soldering: These are tiny little uh, six pin so 23 packages so hey, that's good enough I Really like it.

It's quite optimized for SMD soldering and there's various resolutions available here, but I've had that set to full HD So 920 by 1080 and the update rate that's not too bad at all. Really, that is. Yeah, that I think that's going to be pretty usable for soldering I like it. So there's my stopwatch at full uh, 1080p there and I'm recording in full HD Now using the internal mic on the Lifecam studio device and I've turned off as you can see I've turned off the internal lead light there and I really actually like it under my studio lights here.

That's not bad I think I'm getting about 600 Lux or something on the bench at the moment I'm getting about 530 odd Lux there if I switch my uh studio lights off here and I'm just using regular office lights I'm down to about 300 Lux which is sort of, you know, really quite dim that is I would consider that quite low light and the quality. I'll press record here here we go so we'll get a direct output from that and the quality is pretty good even at that low light. I'm pretty impressed by that now. I show you the difference in the video capture programs I'm now using uh, the Australian software NCH debut video capture and curiously, when I selected the full HD it said it can only do like 5 frames per second.

I'm not sure why, but look yeah, that is like look at that Jello woo that is really yeah. 5 frames per second? That's awful, but that is using the exact same life cam driver that we were using before with that Ukam 6 software and there it is. It's telling me only 5 frames per second. Absolutely awful.

That software is hopeless now. I'm using the recommended virtual dub software which Do-it yourself in Hong Kong actually recommend and uh, well. we got our Tagano software at the moment. let's shift on over to our Microsoft life Cam And there we go.

No problems whatsoever and it's telling us Bingo 30 frames per second? Not an issue at all. Now you may not be able to read it at the moment, but there it is. It's telling us 30 frames per second. and yeah, it looks like I'm truly getting 30 frames per second updating on the screen there.

But if I switch my studio lights off, Bingo gone. The camera is probably compensating, not constant exposure. It's dropped down to 15 frames per second and you really start to see that on the screen as well. So light matters.

But if we switch the uh, the internal light back on, Bam. we're up to back up to 30 frames per second Now using the internal light. So that internal light actually works really well and let's try that one again now. I'm recording once again Ukam 6 Uh, full HD using my Samsung Go mic here on the desktop and uh, once again, it's that minimum Focus uh sorry, that minimum uh, height there.

That's getting me that height adjustment I can bring it into Focus Now there we go. The auto exposure seems to work really well, but if I lay that board down flat on there like that, it's just it's just not working. So yeah, I mean you know it's not a huge issue, it's just the height of the stand. Really? really? the adjustment range of the stand.

but I think that's really, that's really quite nice. All right here we go: I'm going to do a live soldering test I've got a 0.65 mm pitch IC here as you can see, I've put some uh flux down on the pads down here and no I haven't practiced at all I'm not in an ideal position. as always with these solder in tutorials, this one could completely blow up in my face. But anyway, I am going to attempt to I'll probably do it on rotate around I'm going to attempt to do this just looking at the main screen here.

so I'm not actually going to be looking at what I'm doing down I'm going to, uh, be looking directly at the job through the monitor. So let's give it a go. Here we go: I'm going to apply some solder to my tip here. Going to do a bit of drag soldering I haven't uh, or probably drag out I haven't actually tacked any of the corners down yet.

So here we go as always with the soering tutorials. I could completely embarrass myself or didn't have enough I should tack one pin down so I'm not following my own rules here I should certainly do that. but I haven't I'm just going to solder this chip directly while trying to hold in place. There we go.

Now we're now we're talking. Sizzle Sizzle Sizzle There we go. drag out that one in. that one's not going there.

we go. I got him. I got him. Well, that's stuck down anyway.

maybe I can do the other side now. Probably got too much flux on there now and here we go. All right. I'm going to drag out from the chip.

There we go. Look at that. Beautiful. Now we're talking once again.

The biggest problem with this microscope is that you have to raise it off. You have to raise the thing off the uh Off the Bench which is pretty silly. There we go it. It's not the best we're getting like, um, you know, blowing highlights or something I should Pro I Could probably manually adjust the uh brightness and intensity of this thing.

but anyway, I've solded that. 0.6 mm pitch is not very ugly because this isn't the world's best soldering tutorial. and the light. Let me switch off the light there.

There we go. There we go. You can see that it's not too bad, but yeah, I mean with 30 frames per second updating, you can easily see that directly on the screen and do your soldering. So I'm sure you'd have no problems doing 0.5 mm pitch and stuff like that So this works just fine for soldering, not a problem whatsoever.

And for those curious to know about the Ducks guts, The Bees knes the Tagano Fhd. Well, we're talking about a working height here. Fixed working height of 23 cm, 230 mm with a field of view, maximum field of view of well at minimum Zoom of 27 cm. and if you zoom right in on that t In we go in, We go in, We go in, We go in, We go look at that.

That is ridiculous. That is 12 almost. Yeah. 12 mm field of view.

Unbelievable. And I'm recording the monitor at the moment so forgive the quality. but this is a full HD monitor and uh, that is maximum zoom out like that and full zoom in. Well let's go.

yes it is. Auto uh Focus Auto adjustment uh Auto uh brightness Iris adjustment Everything like that. so look at that. you can see inside that RGB lead there.

That's Auto exposure mode. It's got like an F1.6 lens I Believe on the thing and uh oh there there we go. I can adjust the gain F1.6 There it is I can lower the look, look at that. That is just fantastic.

It really is. And if I turn off the light that's in my lab lights here and if I go even lower down to that 300 Lux look at that that is recording with no light. full HD 60 frames per second uh in 300 Luck of light in the lab here which is quite dark and well I can I'm struggling to see any Grain on that I I can just start to see it but wow, so that's a little. Look at this uh, do-it-yourself in Hong Kong USB soldering microscope and I I think it pretty much lives up to its claim I've I Had no real major issues with this at all, even with my, you know, not really high-end uh, notbook or modern.

It's a, you know, a year or a couple of years old I was able to get 30 frames per second full HD no problems at all and actually record it and I had no lag problems using it. uh, soldering or whatever. So it is. Yeah, it does the job and the working distance is, you know, enormous and that's exactly what you want for soldering like this.

And the field of view would have been nice to have a zoom on it of course, but hey, you know you can't have everything but uh, the field of view I think is good enough for just general purpose SMD Soling probably down to you know, 0402 is 0.5 millimeter pin pitch. Stuff like that should handle that. Of course. this thing, this uh Tagano is absolutely incredible.

Nothing beats that full. HD Live updating on the monitor at 60 frames per second, but this thing does the business for $ 240. OD Excellent! I I think I'd Recommend that. certainly over those USB microscopes we saw uh, before.

just purely for the working distance. Um, you know there's no contest whatsoever. Image quality is great I Don't know for the price, can't fold it. So there you go I Hope you enjoyed that.

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Catch you next time.