Tons of you guys have been asking about my microscope
"Where can I buy it?" "What brand is it?"
"where can you buy one?", how much did I pay?
and today, I want to answer all of those questions.
But first... I want to tell you guys a story.
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When I was a kid, I was obsessed with electronics.
well and bonsai trees and needle point and chain-mail armor
lets face it I was kind of a weird kid.
but today I want to talk about the electronics.
I was obsessed with taking things apart, understanding how the worked
and building my own new things from them
I-I really wanted to make my own robot,
uhh, I found this article in uhh- boys life, which is sort of like the boys scout magazine that I got when I was a kid.
it talked about building your own robot from a trash can
and a motor taken form a toy truck
for me, a trip to radio shack was pretty much my idea of heaven.
♫ heavenly music ♫
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and so for me, coming to the electronics market here in Shenzhen, China
is literally a childhood dream come true.
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I think If I'd come here as a kid
I would've refuse to leave
i would have just begged the nearest Chinese family to take me in
and I would become one of those market kids
that sits around doing homework
amongst the... the big piles of cable here.
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In many ways
exploring Shenzhen and the manufacturing scene here
over the past couple of years
has really been about... fulfilling childhood dreams.
One of the things I really struggled with
as a kid was soldering
the solder would get all clumpy
and
I'd rip pads off the board with the tip of the soldering iron
from pushing too hard and generally just make a mess of things.
My expectation of myself
are far exceeded my abilities.
It was extremely frustrating and uh... I saw
it as like this permanent irrecoverable failure.
I mean... lets face it.
I was a really clumsy kid.
I had terrible hand-eye coordination.
I regularly ran into door jambs.
I thought I was a lost cause.
BUT
much... much later
as an adult
I realised a lot of those
deep-seated believes
were actually false.
I mean
I'm still a klutz
like (laughing) I still run into door jambs, sometimes.
But I realised that
a lot of those
personal failures
actually could be kind of worked around
with better equipment
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As a kid I had like a
a crappy radio shack soldering iron
for few dollars
It wasn't temperature adjustable
and it was hard for me
to keep the tip clean and tins.
BUT
It was amazing
like I had the powers in my hands
to melt metal
and I only melted the carpet like once
SORRY MOM
Well and I
only occasionally used it for other things
like wood burning.
Actually Mom you probably should stop watching now
But in recent years
As an adult, I discovered
the joys of owning a proper soldering station
you know one with interchangeable tips
and temperature control
Right now I'm rocking
errr... kind of a.. entry level
HAKO station that friend gave me
which has been awesome.
But the real game changer
WELL
That was buying my microscope last year.
It really allowed me to do things
I didn't know I was capable of
and in the process... it really changed how I see myself.
It all started with this
what's seem like an impossible task to
solder these little tiny wires onto the back
of a lightening jack
As part of my project to trying and add
the headphone jack back on an iPhone 7
If you haven't seen that there's a video about that up here
you should definitely go and watch it.
BUT
I really found that
pretty much a non starter... errr... just with my bear eyes.
I wasn't having any luck
and using this $10 cheap USB microscope
it wasn't really any better.
But, under this bad boy
not only was it possible
But with the little bit of practice
it was actually pretty straight forward.
Being able to see what I'm doing up close
was a real game changer for me
not only can I finally like... really see what I was doing
But actually my hands got a lot steadier under the microscope.
It turns our brains are just incredibly adaptable.
You know with some practice
it becomes pretty easy to use
like with tweezers under the microscope
syringes
even soldering iron.
Frankly, it feels like
I've got a little bit of a... a superpower
MICROSCOPE BOY LEAPS OVER CAPACITORS IN A SINGLE BOUND
Alright, (Laugh) I might be getting a little bit carried away
But, I did wanna talk about the microscope
I brought it here in Shenzhen last year
in the electronics market called
Huaqiangbei
In a building called [name (probably SEG)]
I bought it from a nice lady named Sumei
That is a Chinese microscope seller
She's on the second floor of SEG
I went to a numbers of microscope booths
before I ended up buying this one
But Sumei was the first person that I talk to
who really had what I needed.
I needed a binocular microscope with a camera
and not just with the camera
but with the camera that works
when the two eye pieces are working
and that's important for two reason.
So
Obviously, the camera
is for you guys.
So that you can see what I'm doing
And eye pieces, those are for me
so that I can see what I'm doing
But in particular, I wanted optical eye pieces
Right, I didn't wanna be looking at the screen the whole time
and just looking through the camera
That's because, when you have a camera and a screen
You're introducing some latency into the loop
and that kind of destroys this really important feedback
that's happening between what your hand is doing and what your eyes are seeing
If you can get
theghf... thew
the latency in that to be essentially zero
Through using an optical set-up
That is way way better
than introducing latency with the camera and screen
where your hand starts to get disconnected
from what your eyes are seeing
and your brain gets all confused.
Secondly, I wanted a binocular microscope
Where both eye pieces works the whole time
and the reason that's important
is for depth perceptions
So, you wanna able to judge
how close to the work you're getting
Like, if I.. if I grab pairs of tweezers
and I'm looking through the microscope here
and I'm gonna go grab a component
without that depth of field
I don't really have a sense of how far above the work
my tweezers are.
There are actually two lenses
One for each eye and that's super important
We want to have the same sort of separation between
the two eyes, that our own eyes have
So we have two slightly different pictures
of what we're looking at
and that's what gives us that depth perception
The most important thing was to be able have that binocular vision
both eye pieces and a camera running
at the same time
This camera is 1080p camera
with just HDMI out
and then I run that into my computer
with just a cheap, like USB-HDMI capture device
Comes with a ring light here for seeing your work.
The last thing which is really important
is this
And this is a barlow/reducer
it's a 0.5x reducer
so, it'll allows you to raise the microscope
twice as high
If I didn't have this, I'd have the microscope
down here
and it wouldn't be enough room
to really get in there with like soldering iron
and hot air gun
and tweezers and everything.
So by adding that, that just screws on
to the bottom of the lens here
and emm... like this
and that allows me to have it up this high.
Now a lot of you guys has asked me
what brand is the microscope
and there's (laugh), there's no brand
anywhere on it.
The best I can tell you is that I bought it from Sumei
in the market on the second floor of the SEG building.
But a lot of people been asking like
where I buy one
Can you get one for me?
and I was thinking about it
I thought, I'll maybe like
Maybe I can go to Sumei, she doesn't speak any English or doesn't speak much English
and she's not really set-up to trade outside of China
So, I thought well you know maybe I can bunch of microscopes from her
and then maybe I can put a Strange Part's Logo on it
and it can be a Strange Parts microscope
and then I'll sell them from the Strange Parts store
but, (laugh) I realised, I don't actually want to do customer support for microscopes
I'm already busy enough as it is making videos
So, instead
I reached out to Sumei and she set-up and Ali Express store
Just for you guys
So, she's giving you the same deal she gave me
which is one hell of a deal
It's 300 bucks for everything
She's not paying me to say this
This is not a sponsored video
You guys keep asking me and she seems like a nice person
and I wanted to help everybody out
if you wanna buy a microscope from her, she would love it.
300 bucks and you have to pay shipping on top of that coz these things are heavy
If you're struggling to do fine detail work
whether it's soldering or model making
or needle point
or calligraphy
I'd strongly suggest that you go out
and consider getting a microscope
It doesn't have to be this one
but for me this was a real game changer
and I think you might find that you also have
a hidden superpower you didn't know you had
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and lastly
if I could say one thing to my younger self
it would be this
our taste develop much faster than our skills
and so if you're frustrated
by your abilities to create what you have in your head
if you
feel like you never gonna be able to make something that measure up to your expectations
Be patient
It'll come, it will take time and it'll take practice
But you'll get there
If you like to hear more about this idea
it's actually something that I've got from Adam Savage
on the, the still untitled podcast
It's really kind of a beautiful conversation about this idea
of our taste and our skills sort of developing
at much different paces from each other
I put a link to that podcast in the description, highly recommend going and watching it.
As always, I'm Scotty from Strange Parts
If you enjoyed this video, hit that SUBSCIRBE button down below
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If you guys would like to see this microscope in action onto my projects
you could checkout the video that I did about trying to add the headphone jack to
back to the iPhone. That's here
And then I just did one about upgrading iPhone memory so you can check that out here, I'm using the microscope again.
That does it for today, I've got bunch more exciting stuff on the way
so stay tuned
I'll see you guys next time.
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ENGLISH SUBTITLES BY ZOHAIB
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