Sooner or later in the life of an amateur to repair electronics, a moment comes when, in addition to a soldering iron, additional equipment begins to be required, which will allow to solder not only what you can clearly see with the naked eye, but also every little thing that you did not have the courage to aim at at the initial stage of development ' hot sting techniques. ' Of course, we are talking about soldering loops and tiny elements on the board, which, before soldering them, you must first manage to make out.
What to do? You can try to develop supervision and then easily distinguish even a pimple on … on the body of an elephant. Or you can go a simpler, but costly way – buy a microscope or binocular. Better, of course, a binocular – two eyes are better than one. But here the novice 'Lefty' faces the acute question of money. Yes, if you are going to professionally deal with repairs and earn a living from this, then the most correct option would be to buy that very binocular.
But if you are a professional, then why do you need this article? You yourself know everything. ?
And for a novice master who has decided to try to get into the microcosm with his hot sting at least once, information will be useful that a binocular, into which you can look without tears, will cost about 5 thousand rubles. And the price of a better option can generally reach indecent values.
On the one hand, this is not much, on the other hand, to pay so much for a device that will be used a few times is not an entirely adequate act. And it also happens that you need to solder here and now, and go through the whole city for the binoculars.
For such cases, today's option, which I want to talk about, is just right.
Do it yourself
So, we make a microscope from improvised means.
The most useful tool today, oddly enough, is a smartphone. This is what we will do with a microscope.
In my case, it will be a device from the beloved and respected Korean company Samsung – S7 edge. This fighter is the second phone and most often acts as a guinea pig in various experiments.
In order to assemble a simple microscope, we do not need as much as it seems.
- Actually, the smartphone itself.
- A stable base on which you can firmly secure your smartphone. A tripod is best. The main condition is that the mount between the smartphone and the tripod is rigid, otherwise the picture will dance before your eyes.
- A laptop or computer that will act as a viewfinder.
- A program for displaying images from a phone to a computer monitor. In the case of Samsung, this is a special SideSync application that must be installed on both the computer and smartphone.
- USB cable that will connect the smartphone to the computer.
That, in fact, is all that we may need.
To begin with, download the SideSynk application from the official website to your computer and install it, simultaneously agreeing to everything that is offered there (since this application is not from the mail – it will not install any 'agents' and 'amig').
At the same time, we install an application with the same name on the phone.
We connect the phone to the computer with a cable, after turning off Wi-Fi on the phone or on the computer, the application has priority for connecting via wireless networks, and this is slower than via a cable, which means there may be delays, which we do not need at all.
After starting the application, the devices will see each other and you can connect.
After successful pairing and connection, it will be possible to display the phone screen on the computer. You can restrict yourself to this view, or you can rotate and unfold the image to the entire computer screen – this will increase convenience by increasing the size of the displayed information.
After that, we fix the phone on a tripod with the camera down, and at such a height that it would be convenient for us to do something with a soldering iron under the resulting structure.
Then we launch the camera in the video mode (this is important), provide lighting, for example, using a USB flashlight, focus with the mouse on the desired object, make the maximum zoom, and voila – we get an almost full-fledged microscope, in which everything that happens is pretty decent in the work area. To prevent the camera from turning off by timeout, you sometimes need to touch the mouse or put it on your knees so that the cursor moves from involuntary muscle contractions.
By the way, if there is no external lighting, then you can use the phone's flash, but in this case, you will need to turn on the video recording mode during the repair – this also has a plus – after the repair is completed, you will have a video recording of your feat in the microcosm.
As for the quality of the final image, in good lighting conditions there is no discomfort even on devices with a weaker camera. Yes, in comparison with a binocular, this solution has a drawback – the picture is obtained without depth, since the camera cannot convey volume.
If you do not have Samsung, then a cable connection, such as MHL or SlimPort, can be used as a similar solution. By the way, you can connect not only to a laptop, but also to a monitor or even a TV. In this case, the picture will be even larger.
If it's a pity to use your main phone for these purposes, then using the same cable you can also connect a phone in this way, for example, with a broken display, adapting it as a microscope on a permanent basis. But this is already a more complicated option, the alternative to which is buying an inexpensive electronic monocular on the same AliExpress. This option costs about 1,500 rubles and has an image quality comparable to a smartphone camera.
In this case, you do not have to be smart with lighting and connections, since this is a specialized device that has all the necessary interfaces and is enclosed in a compact case.
Conclusion
The relevance of this or that option for you depends primarily on the goals that you are pursuing. If soldering small elements for you is an episodic lesson in your mood, then there is no point in buying professional equipment (unless there is extra money), and in this case even the option of buying an electronic device on AliExpress is suitable. The solution with a phone as a microscope is rather a temporary option and a way out of a situation when you urgently need to solder here and now, but there is nothing to increase. However, despite all the controversial nuances, this option also has the right to life, since it allows you to solve the task before you in the conditions that are now, because the need for invention is cunning.