Hi. In previous videos, you've seen me use this puppy quite a few times. It's the Mantis Elite stereoscopic inspection microscope. you see me use it for our solder in for inspection of you know, bad solder joints or you know anything.

They requires a reasonably low magnification like anything under x 10 and this is the Ducks guts the bee's Knees of stereoscopic vision inspection microscopes for PCB work and stuff like that actually doing surface mount soldering and other forms of inspection. and I've done a review of this I won't go over how fantastic it is which I can't actually show you on camera unfortunately because it is actually stereoscopy of I sit in front of it and I move my head like this just around a little bit I can actually see the image moving and it is stereoscopic just like your traditional stereoscopic microscopes like this. but instead of having to peer into the eyepieces like this and try and do that soldiering for 10 hours on a huge board all day, you just get so fatigued as incredible this thing much more ergonomic. it's usually got a larger working distance and anyway, it's fantastic.

But the problem with this puppy is that it's hopeless for getting any sort of images out of it. digital images either still photography or video and you see me try and use it. A few times in my videos where I've actually held that like put the camcorder on a tripod and I've just gotten it right in line perfectly with one of the vision piles in there. and if I get the zoom just right in the focus and the distance and the angle and I have my tongue at the right angle I Can just maybe get an image out of this thing as but it's designed for purely optical work just looking through it like this.

Thankfully, the guys at Vision Engineering and their local reps Hawker Richardson here in Australia have sent me the new Mantis Elite It's exactly the same model. it's the Mantis Elite, but it's got the cam. It's the Mantis Elite cam with the built-in camera. Awesome! So let's check it out.

Now it's actually quite a horde they sent through here, but we've got the main that head itself we've got. This is rather exciting. We've got one of these embedded pcs which go on the back, so presumably that's got all the vision inspection software and everything pre-installed We've got exactly the same universal arm I Was hoping that they'd send me the one a different arm, but identical. I've got a Dell Ultrasharp 25 inch monitor, I've got another 22 inch monitor back there, keyboard and the head itself as well as and once again, you get different heads for these.

You can order exactly like the exact magnification you want. this is the times for lens for example that just screws into the bottom you can put up - thanks Jim From Hawk at Richardson you can put up to two of these lenses on the bottom of the unit and any one time and then swivel them in and out and you can see that under. here. you can see that this one has a tines for lens on the front and times, eight lens on the back and you can just swivel it around like that to get the magnet magnification that you need.

Now you can get X 10 lenses for this and I think even up to X 15 but on this Universal stand that they got here like this I wouldn't I I really have found that anything over x 8 gets a little bit fiddly. So I've tried to use a X 10 on this and that's okay. but because you have to move it up and down to adjust the focus and if you wobble the bench at all, you know you get a little bit of wobble. you can sort of lock it in place and stuff like that.

but you know? yeah I wouldn't with the universal arm like this I wouldn't be using anything over a X 8. but they do have like a desktop stand which is less flexible than this because this is really nice. You can just you know, move this all around you, swing it out when you don't need it, swing it in. But the trade-off of course is the stability of the image and that's what I got in the packet.

I've got the UI's software which it uses to do the you know image inspection on the PC and stuff like that, measurement and all that sort of stuff. So mantis didn't write that somebody else wrote that, but that's quite common. And here's inspection head. Nicely vacuum formed and suspended inside this box.

They really know how to do packaging because this thing has really precision optics. Just a tip, if you're buying one of these on ebay and and you're getting it shipped, make sure that the person shipping it really knows what they're doing because you don't want this puppy to be damaged in transit. and that's really nice packaging. They've got these straps on the side which like just hold it sort of suspended right in the middle like that.

Brilliant. And here's the new head. Here's the old one. Absolutely identical, except this one has the lenses attached.

There's the rotating mechanism for the lenses are very springy, very nice, very professional, and it's got the same version. two LED lights on it and they work really well. I Don't actually done a video doing an inline dimmer attachment for this thing. It's a shame though they haven't upgraded with a dimmer like how hard would it be or maybe you know, dimmer separate sides of the light for example, because that's useful for getting that set for viewing serial numbers and stuff like that.

If you have the light coming from only one side and you know less or none from the other, you can actually light up the the part numbers on chips in different ways anyway. that's you know. I Really would have liked it for the money you invest in one of these. I would like to see now a dimmer separate dimmer control for each.

LED Anyway, absolutely identical and there's the there's the input for the LED light but the only difference you can see is this tiny little four pin connected down there. that must be for the internal camera. so that would be some form of art, power and serial bus. And if you haven't seen how this site Universal stand works, it doesn't even screw in, it just pops on top like that and the sheer weight of the thing just holds it down.

and this one actually has just a clamp on it. You can mount it on the right of the bench. You can actually screw this down into the benches. Well, you don't necessarily have to clamp it on the side, but it's more versatile that way for me and it really is very easy to assemble This just too big are screws which I go through the head here.

on to the universal stand and Bob's your uncle, All right. I Know you glass aficionados want to see the glass where it's all at. This is the X 8 lens. These are very, very expensive lenses.

There is a hell of a lot of glass and precision at glassing these things. Very heavy, weighs a ton and truck for young players. Don't use just the bare lens under there when you're soldering and doing other stuff. Get the protective cap set super cheap and they just clip on there and they protect your expensive optics.

your fool if you don't use them. Yes, that connector on the back is just a standard. Well, this weird asked for pin one to a standard art USB So why they didn't just whack the Usb on the back of it? They could have engineered that in I Don't know. Maybe they didn't want to change their mouldings or something.

I Yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna preferred straight USB Trying to get a replacement for this thing. Sure, and if you're wondering what this knob on the side is, well, it's a bit of a dead giveaway. It's a distance between your pupils, so you know everyone's got different with the pupil distance and things like that.

So yeah, adjust that until it's right for you. now. presumably you don't have to buy This is probably an optional extra. should check on that.

But yet, we've got one of these small form-factor pcs that fits on the Visa mount on the back of the monitor and so I've got a 24 inch Monda they supplied this. it's probably their standard one and there we go. There's the mounting holes and let's have a look at the PC we got. It's just going to be an off-the-shelf one.

Like you can use anything, but It's probably got the software OS and software and everything pre-installed So if you you know if you're spending someone else's money, you want to get one of these puppies. That's MSI Nice. So they're branded that Vision Engineering but it's one of these small form-factor pcs and solder HDMI You know, fairly basic. don't know what the specs yet have to pair it up and the PC is going on the back of there nicely.

but they fell one thing and I Know this is really nitpicky, but when you you know when you're selling a professional system like this I think it's important. I Mean here's the HDMI output here. Here's the HDMI input. I mean you know it's just like like six inches.

That's all you need a six inch HDMI cable. They give you a two meter cable. like why? that's just. it's just dumb.

you just got to tie it up in place. So yeah, how hard is it to? you know if you're getting custom lead like this made for your USB why can't you just sure? you can buy short HDMI cables like that. Just small touches like that. It's just gets in the way of all my other cables.

Yeah, you can see it from the front and somehow I don't think that cables gonna work in Australia I think I might have one though. So yeah, that's a fail. No one annoying thing is that they've got the light cable integrated into the stand, which is all very nice. but the USB cable just like comes off at an angle like this and where I'm supposed to tie it up here myself.

like what? No, it's just sort of hacked on. I Don't like it. Alright, let's power this thing on. I Didn't get a mouse although I couldn't find one in the box.

Maybe I've lost it you yom-yom Ah. I've never heard of that. Monday Anyway, let's power it on and see what happens. I Plugged in keyboard, mouse and the microscope.

Tada military or military class. Beautiful. what does that got? You know, just like good quality caps or something. is that pretty much it all right.

Here we go. These are the password is vision apparently and that's it. It's got windows installed. just nice and presume, but like yeah, okay, when is the icon? Do I have to install the software? like seriously, this a very expensive, bitter kid and yeah, I got that.

I got the software with it but I shouldn't have to install it after I got a USB key but yeah, come on. So yeah, here's the USB stick. I've got the manuals in Tada Micro I-64 so we'll install that I'll get back to you IDs Micro I Set up Version 4.6 Complete. Oh yeah, let's install everything, shall we? Yeah, whatever.

Please choose a profile to adjust the camera parameters. Optimal colors. Live video You start micro a cockpit in expert mode. Do Not show a dialog again.

All right. Live video. Come on. nothing.

We can't just install the software and expect this to pop up apparently. Open Camera No Micro I Camera present. We got it. Stupid me.

Plugged in the USB before I installed the software. You got to install the software first and then plug in the USB. So I can install the driver first so then dumb. Anyway, yeah, it's working.

no worries. Look, we're in like Flynn and the first thing I notice is that the view is cropped. I Didn't expect to get like this circle which you get when you look through this thing you get. you know your traditional microscope circle so it's obviously cropped it.

You can see that like just outside the ground silk screen here and just I almost. you know 3/4 of the way to the edge of that pot. I'll show you try and get it through the lens and there you go. That's what I'm seeing through the lens on.

well. one lens on this thing, you don't get the stereoscopic effect. Of course if I had two cameras, I could actually maybe I know I've tried to do that before. Actually, it does not enough room to get them in there I Don't think.

anyway. So yeah, they have cropped that fairly severely actually. I mean take a look at these two side-by-side and this is one of the problems with the universal standard. If I don't touch this bit I mean this is not the most original A it's yeah, it's a little bit how you're doing, but if I just lean on this and try and use the mouse.

You can see our image wobbling wobbling around there. So yeah, it's not the best. you'd fix that with the universal sorry the desktop bust and instead of this Universal stand or simply having a more stable bench. Mm-hmm I give up my day job anything I'll go into business building benches.

and I'm gonna say up front, this is not designed for live video work. It is designed to take snapshots and things like that. Yes, it'll do video, but like most USB microscopes it, you know it doesn't have a great update rate. Okay, so you don't You don't want to be buying this thing for live video.

it doesn't. Okay job, but you wouldn't want to do any live solely on under it. And what the hell would you when you've got that beautiful optical viewport on the thing? That's the whole idea. So this software is designed for just you know, annotating, documentation, annotation, and capture all that sort of stuff.

Actually, it's very quick on the defaulter screen size here of our 800 by 600 art live video window. Here you can see the number of frames in the display update right and you can see tonight 37 frames per second. Brilliant. But it won't get that when we go to full resolution.

And please excuse me for not actually screen capturing this. so it's just the camcorder directly on the screen here and we've got different types of profiles here. We can go to monochrome and takes a second to process, but look, it's automatically stretched at here and so it's gone to this option to scale the display to the window size. If we go back to one to one, it's now gone.

You can see down in the bottom corner here it's now gone to 1600 by 1200 and bingo which I believe is the maximum I think and bingo 12 frames per second. updating. So yeah, that's pretty horrible. If and the first thing I noticed is that in the regular live image here, it is quite dim.

Nowhere near as bright is what you got through the optical viewfinder of the thing, but that only seems to be in this video mode. By the way, we can turn a histogram on here. There we go, Got a nice looking histogram that's pretty groovy that doesn't affect the framerate or anything like that. So getting 37 frames per second at the moment.

But if I change this to say if I go to optimal colors here, it seems to be much, much brighter. I Can only presume that the smaller 800 by 600 mode isn't let in as much light in and it's just darker. I Don't know what the deal is and we can get some host performance data here. You can see frames per second from camera 12.7 Our CPU is about 70 percent loading.

maximum frame per second possible by CPU 70 frames per second. There you go. Yeah, but not at the resolution we're looking at and at the maximum resolution. There 1600 by 1200 looks to be capturing the same frame capture area, so yeah, it's it's limited I'd Much prefer looking through the viewfinder.

it's just so sexy. So basically we can start and stop the thing. We can capture a single window which I haven't actually tried to do yet. It just did, but looks like it didn't go back to live video there and it doesn't look that like we can do much else.

We can see what we can do a continuous trigger, does that continually take snapshots? That'd be nice if it did, but like, where's all the measurement stuff I don't know I mean we've got the histogram, but like save image like there's not much else. Mmm well there's no shortage of stuff you can muck around with. This thing the camera said is the pixel clock. Geez you know this is real the the gain of the you know of the sensor itself and there's our there's all our different sizes yet maximum 600 by 1200 and what format we want so it's all.

It's all very impressive in terms of our capture capability, but it doesn't see to do much else. If you have a look at the manual for this thing, look it's got a menu option up here which says draw measure and it's got all these tools and everything which is what I expect. But we go to our software here and I don't have a draw measure menu option and no tools? No, nothing. Where the hell is it? I Found it? Are you kidding me? You remember back at the start when I asked us if we wanted to start in the startup dialog if we wanted expert mode, you've got to turn expert mode on.

Oh, you don't have to be an expert in quote marks to be able to just measure use the measure stuff. but now we've got it all down the side here. Now we can do stuff and play around at Unbelievable. And by the way, you should actually go up here and load parameters and load the parameter file that they actually give you.

It sets up the settings for the Mantis elite cam. Anyway, we can go into this thing, set up new area of interest and we can just say we want an area of interest and it just shows us that. Not sure why, but hmm okay. get rid of the visual Club or elsewhere.

you know, don't mind this mode here. We've got this sharpness measure so we can actually set a window here and it'll give us a sharpness setting you might be able to see that it's it's green which is showing 90 and if we change the, move it up and take it out of focus, you can see that it's dropping 6054. Not sure we can see that value down there in red, but yeah, it basically shows you when you're in focus. But yeah, why I've got my eye that can tell me that.

but anyway has that ability to show you within that area if it's in focus or not. So can do all the basic stuff with our tools. over here. we can draw lines yay and we can draw sorry, freehand and we can draw lines so we can annotate the thing and well, you can either do it live or in a snapshot image and we can measure as well.

We can put in some measurements there we go, but that's not calibrated because that's not 422 millimeters or whatever it says. And sure we can go in here and set it up into measurement unit in per pixel for example. But like I'm buying this tool right? Why do I have to set this thing up? It should know, right? You should be able to select from a menu. I'm using my X 4 lens, I'm using my Time 8 lens.

It's in focus, therefore we know the focal distance. Yeah, at least get pretty close. Like, why do you have to do all this manually? It's just no. it's just these small things which don't make this worthwhile at all.

but that's basically it. I mean the measure. It just allows you to measure from one point to another. There's no things that automatically measure diameter and you know stuff like that says some of you know, even some of your cheap USB Microscopes, you know, come with software that allow you to do.

You know, much fancier stuff than this, so this is pretty basic. I'm fairly disappointed in it now. I Have no idea if you're going to be able to see this I won't be able to see until I Play it back. but I'm just basically checking for noise at the moment and I'm checking for grain from the sensor because this has to do with the amount of vailable light shining.

It's not too much, but I can see it. it's You know, it's not too bad. So the available light on the the internal light on the Mantis Elite cam seems to be doing the business, but it could be a little bit better there is. You know, a bit of grain on that image which you get when you don't have enough light.

It's an issue of light. It's like the the My Tigana microscope for example. it's internal light is hopeless. Fantastic microscope.

but it's internalized. Absolutely hopeless. And you get video grain everywhere. It's just awful.

so this one's actually it's It's not doing too bad. Are you going to give that a pass now? I Switched in the X 8 lens here so we get double the magnification we did before and we'll be able to see the difference between. what we're looking at now is a board with a photo image Abul overlay on a photo image of all sorts for whatever better term and I'll show you that between a dot matrix one. this is the board we're looking at before and now you can see the individual dots in there.

You can see that was done with a dot printer, so you know really, quite really significantly see the difference in there. And if we get this on an angle, we'll be able to go in there and see inside. Some of these are theirs. So there we go.

we can see inside some of the vias. Sorry for the wobble there, but that's the best I can do on this bench. It's not optimized for this sort of thing, but yeah, it really is quite nice. But you know nothing you can't do with one of those cheap-ass USB microscopes at all.

So yeah, yeah, nothing to write home about just does the job. But as I said at start this microscope, the Mantis Elite is not designed for like you know, high magnification inspection. As I said, you know you can actually get a X 20 lens for this, but I've never used a X 20 on a Mantas Elite. I've only ever used up to Y times 10 and you know that's what it's good for.

It's not a high magnification microscope, it's a vision inspection tool. And for at live soldering I mean this microscope is absolutely unbeatable for life. Solder it and I can just flip that lens in there we go. So that's the X 4 and that's our X 8.

You can see the difference. Typically you would use the X 4 lens for most general purpose SMD soldering because you get a bigger working distance, you get a larger frame on there. you can see the iron coming in. You know it's good enough for like Oh 402 and stuff like that.

But when you're in. but when you're inspecting Oh for O2 or smaller stuff, usually I won't live solder with at the X 8. But then when I'm doing inspection I'll work in the X 8 lens and then we can, you know, really start to see some stuff you know? check it out There we go. that's with our X 8 lens.

We can really get in there and inspect those joints very nicely. You and here we go. I'm doing a video capture test in 720p so 1280 by 720 and it's telling me that's getting a frame update rate of 33 frames per second. so that's pretty darn good.

So you can see them side by side through the viewfinder. And of course I'm shooting this with my camcorder at 50 frames per second. So really, you know You shouldn't see any difference between the captured video. So it's You know it's it's doing pretty decent.

I Mean nothing wrong with 33 frames per second. That's excellent, but for 720p. But of course you don't get the full HD out of it. Of course it just does slows down, drops down to 17 frames per second at 1600 by 1200.

But the big problem? Look at the frame size. look. It is totally cropped it. It's just ridiculous.

You get a bit more when you get a substantial bit more frame at 1600 by 1200. It's still not as good as the optical viewfinder, so it really is punishing you by cropping that image. But hey, the frame rate is adequate. but this is not what it's for.

I Mean you know you're not gonna do live sold in under this while watching the monitor or anything like that. It's just dumb. You know you've got something. The world's best optics in this thing so you're just going to look through the hood.

I Mean, but anyway, it can do it. So there you have it. there's the Mantis Elite Cam. thank you very much Vision Engineering.

and Hawker Richardson for upgrading my Elite, my regular Elite cam to my regular Mantis Elite to the Mantis Elite cam with the camera building and that's pretty much all it is. That's that's the bottom line. I Mean it is the industry's best optical vision inspection camera coupled with a pretty ordinary USB camera attachment and I'm pretty disappointed. you know, didn't work nicely out of the box.

but even then the USB camera software is pretty order. II doesn't have any advanced functionality or anything like that. It doesn't have a high frame rate update camera, but as I said, that's not its purpose. If you're buying this thing for doing lie work under like it's just not the right tool.

you can go on eBay and buy a couple hundred dollar USB camera and it's going to give a similar performance and update rating and software. In terms of you know, using it as a basic you know, live USB microscope. That's not what it's for. It's designed for people who have a need and a use for the regular mantas optics and they want to capture some stuff and you know, document it and things like that which is what I need it for because I'm always using this if I'm doing a teardown or something I want to inspect something if I'm doing some solar in I'm gonna be using this puppy instead of any other bit of inspection gear I've got a man I've got a top-of-the-line - Garneau microscopes 60 frames per second.

Fantastic. But no, this thing kills it. In terms of you know, the optical, just looking through it, doing your soldering. it's just absolutely brilliant.

You really have to look through these things to know how good they actually are I can't really show it on camera unfortunately, but yeah, I'm a bit disappointed. Just like this cable for example this USB yeah cable out of the thing. it's like it's just like tacked on. you know it like like usually this is like really superbly built with the cable built into the arm and everything.

but they're just like tacked on a camera. and I don't know why it's not very professional I could easily knock that and you know, ruin that custom USB camera connection on it I don't Yeah it just seems slap together and that's a real shame for a professional bit of kit like this. but hey, it does work. it does the business.

So if you're were looking at getting a mantis Elite then right in my if you're spending the money for a man to listen, lead I'm not sure the price difference between the camera and the non camera version, but you probably should spring for the camera one because you're probably gonna need it one day so it's worth having. So yes, if I want to actually do live, either capture, video capture work, or presentation, you know if I was doing like live work in front of an audience in a classroom or something like that I wouldn't be using this. The update rate just isn't good unless you use 800 by 600 mode and well, yeah, any USB camera on the market can do that. although it doesn't have the ridiculously good optics that this thing has.

but at the end of the day when you're doing USB image capture Microsoft's microscope capture work like this, it's pretty much all about the frame rate and that's a pretty much frame rate and the resolution as well. So if I'm doing that live capture work I'm going to be using my Tigana microscope which gets 60 frames per second. Update: It's a shame this thing doesn't have you know, a real high frame rate camera option, but it's good enough just for capturing documentation and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean when you got optics like this, you don't want to be looking at it on the 2d screen.

Sacrilege. No, oh, you want this, it's just beautiful. Oh man. I've worked in front of these puppies all day long and I can tell you they're the Ducks guts.

so thanks, Vision Engineering! Hawkeye Richardson I'll link them in down below if you want to get one of these puppies and they'll come around and they'll actually give you demos at your work and stuff like that and show you how good these optics are. Absolutely brilliant or check them out as a trade show or something like that. Highly recommended! So there you go I Hope you enjoyed it if you did Comments all that sort of stuff down below. Catch you next time and check it out.

You can see the different optical paths inside this thing and here's the pupil distance adjustment. There we go. It's actually just moving one of them like that. you.