Hey Everyone!
Andonstar has obviously seen how bad my eyesight is getting and have sent me a little present.
It's the Andonstar AD409 microscope.
Let's see what's in the box.
We've got an instruction manual - I'll actually read this for a change.
It's nicely packaged. Everything is secure.
This is the screen it's a 10.1-inch screen and the lens assembly is attached to it.
We've got the power adapter.
I'll probably be powering this with my USB hub, but it's nice that they've included the correct plug.
There's the remote control - I was initially sceptical about how useful this would be,
but it's actually quite handy as you can avoid jogging the microscope and use it hands-free.
Here's the optical bracket for the screen and lens.
And we've got these little clips - I've seen some suggestions that these should be left off
as they get in the way of your PCBs.
I've got a pretty large PCB that I need to solder so I'll leave them off for now.
There's a mini HDMI cable for hooking the microscope up to a monitor
we'll definitely give that a go.
Here are the USB cables with built-in light controls.
And finally, we've got the base and lights.
Assembly is pretty straightforward, we just align the optical bracket with these holes
and use the supplied hex key to screw it together.
The lens slides into the optical bracket and is secured by these thumbscrews.
There are actually two positions that you can fit the lens, you can either have it all
the way inserted - in this position you'll get the maximum possible zoom.
Or you can have only the top inserted.
This will give you a much larger field of view which is quite handy when soldering.
The USB cable has a Micro USB plug that goes into the back of the display and a separate
jack to power the lights.
There are also some switches to control the light's brightness.
That's it completely assembled.
Let's do a quick run-through of the specs.
It's a 4 Megapixel sensor With a 10.1 inch 1280x800 display
There's an SD card slot for recording video and still pictures - the manual says this
supports up to 32GB but I tried it with a 64GB card and everything worked fine.
There's also an HDMI output that will drive a monitor at 1080P (which is 1920 x 1080 pixels)
- we'll try that out on one of my monitors.
There's a companion app that works on Windows machines.
And it's also got built-in WiFi that lets you connect a mobile app.
That's enough of the specs - let's give it a go.
I've set it up in the standard way with the lens all the way down.
Let's see what magnification we get.
I've put my metal ruler underneath it and we'll measure what size it is on the screen.
This is as far down as it will go and still be in focus.
I've got it pointing at the mm scale on the ruler, so it looks like each mm is being zoomed
up to 5cm on the screen.
Let's try the same but with my external monitor.
Now each mm is about 13cm - that's pretty big!
If we use the digital zoom we can get it magnified up to 3 times - we're now looking at about
29cm for 1mm.
That works out at pretty much 300x magnification as stated in the manual.
That's pretty crazy!
Let's try out some soldering
I've got some new boards from PCBWay which need some 0603 components soldering on.
Here's an 0603 resistor - I'm filming the screen of the microscope so you can see what I'm seeing
it's a little bit awkward to work around the camera but I'll do my best.
I'm using the technique of putting solder on one of the pads and then melting the solder
and sliding the component onto the pad.
Once one side of the component is tacked down we can do the other side and then reflow the first side.
Let's try it again without the camera in the way - this is the recording from the SD Card
- I've also switched to some much thinner solder.
We'll add some solder to the first pad and then slide the resistor on, then we'll solder
the other side.
I've tried adding a blob of flux to help the process.
So, this looks pretty good from the top view, how does it look from the side-on?
Well, I'm not too happy.
There's a blob sticking out.
Reapplying the soldering iron seems to have made it even more ugly.
It's probably ok, but let's try removing some of the solder with braid.
It's actually kind of fun to watch this.
But now let's look from the side again.
Well, I seem to have removed all the solder
so let's try again.
We'll just flow some more solder onto each side.
Now when we look from the side on, it's not great - but I think it will do.
A quick clean with some alcohol and we've got a nice shiny solder joint.
It looks pretty good.
It's a great tool for inspecting soldering work - I've got some IC sockets that I've
soldered and you can really see the ones where I've done a half-assed job.
These LEDs and resistors were my first attempts - the soldering is pretty terrible and I'll probably
redo them, but they do light up - so that's good.
Any tips from the audience on how to get better at SMD soldering would be greatly appreciated.
There's plenty of room to work and even though this board is pretty big I was able to get
it positioned conveniently.
I definitely need some more practice, but even after a few attempts, I can feel myself
getting the hang of it.
I've also captured some still images which have come out really nicely.
I've put a link to these in the description so you can view them in their full glory.
There is some software that you can use with the microscope, but it's windows based
and I'm on a Mac.
I had some trouble getting the mobile app to work, I'll try it again later after a bit
of troubleshooting.
All in all, this is going to be a pretty useful addition to my set of tools.
I think I'll be looking to invest in a hot air rework station as my soldering is terrible.
I'll be using this microscope to solder up the rest of the boards so I'll keep you posted
on how I find it.
Thanks for watching!
And I'll see you in the next video!