Andonstar 5 inch Screen 1080P Digital Microscope HDMI Microscope for Circuit Board Repair Soldering Tool ADSM302

 

l’optique est de bonne qualit, le support est solide et stable.
Globalement, c’est qualitatif.

 

Purchased this a while ago as an upgrade from my last microscope and I’m glad I did. Very sharp and clear images with adjustable lighting. I had to put some white paper on the glass of the lights because it has a blue hue to it. Also the original cable I got with it had a short in it, after contacting the seller they sent me a new one that has worked without a problem. Very please with the product and customer service. If you are in the market for a decent microscope, you found it here!

 

Es impresionante la calidad de imagen que tiene este aparato funciona muy bie

 

At this $250 price point, there are a lot of digital micro/macro scopes to choose from. I’ve only had experience with a few, but this Andonstar is much better than the others — even better than I had anticipated. There are a lot of things to like about this scope.

First of all, it’s shipped with extremely effective cushioning, and arrived fully functional. Above-average cables & connectors were provided (except for the two AAA batteries for the remote). The power supply is 5V via USB, and a 2-Amp USB wall wart is provided, although I’m running it successfully (in stand-alone mode) on an unpowered USB hub, LCD, LED lights, and all. The all-black finish is (for me) much preferred over the older model’s white finish. The stand and the assembly as a whole are solid and free of wiggles and vibration.

But using it is where I really appreciated Andonstar’s usability. The long lens barrel is extremely easy to handle, and focuses with an easy touch with smooth (and necessary) viscous damping. It’s effortless to dial in a sharp focus, even when digitally zoomed all the way, and there’s no backlash. The length of the focusing tube also puts the small but sharp color LCD at a good height and the long focus removes the lens well away from solder smoke, tools, etc.

Vertical adjustment is in two stages — you can loosen an Allen screw on the mounting bracket and move the whole assembly down (it arrived in the full top position), although I doubt anyone would do this with the supplied lens, since its closest focus is about 2″, which is also roughly the lowest position possible. At this distance (which is still enough space for SMD soldering) the field of view is just under 0.3″ wide on the built-in LCD. The image is bright and clear. The maximum working distance is a bit more than 4.5″, giving a field of view well over 0.6″ on the LCD. This allows for a huge amount of space above the stage, making it ideal for SMD work.

This brings me to the only obvious defect in the design. The vertical adjustment works smoothly from lowest position up to about 60% of the way, and then gets tighter and stiffer until about 80% of full height, where the adjustment knobs require more force than I dare use. There may be an adjustment to alleviate this gradual binding near the top position, but I haven’t looked into it yet. There would definitely be times when I would want to use maximum height, and the feel of the mechanism binding tighter and tighter is annoying for something that’s so smooth and easy in all its other adjustments. Vertical adjustment doesn’t appear to be rack & pinion, and might involve a steel tape mechanism, but we shall see. I will contact Andonstar for assistance, and update this review accordingly.

Plugging the display directly into a 50″ UHD panel (without a PC) looks very impressive. New users should note that the scope initially defaults to maximum sharpening, which gives a fairly horrible image. Adjustment buttons on the remote control can set sharpness to low, medium, and high, and I find that low is quite acceptable. Occasionally medium adds some helpful sharpness on faint chip markings.

There are a few operational refinements I would like (turn off lights in stand-alone mode without turning off camera, for one), but this isn’t something I’ll need to do much. Mainly, I’m just very impressed with the design and rigidity, smoothness of focus, and image clarity. Very satisfied with purchase, especially if I can rectify the vertical adjustment issue, which I’m pretty sure is going to be a simple tweak.

The software, however, is another matter. For starters, a quick Google will locate a link that looks like the needed app, but these links are mostly defunct. There is a Dropbox link in the manual, however, that works. It’s provided in a shortened goo.gl form, and also fully spelled out. There’s nothing else there in Dropbox, however — just the software.

Next, the USB connection to a PC has trouble going through a hub. I haven’t tried it with a powered hub yet, but with a passive hub the camera is recognized but no image appears. If this is your first time using the software, there’s no indication of what the problem might be. Later in the manual, after explaining the software, there is a section on hooking up the scope, with a warning that your USB must be providing sufficient power, although this is described as 5V, which tells us nothing about power requirements. I recommend starting with a direct connect to the PC, and if a hub is needed, expect it to require its own power.

There is no mention of the camera’s required startup choice on USB, in which you must choose Camera Mode. This is fairly obvious, but perhaps a PC can also access the memory card (if any) you have inserted in the scope? I haven’t tried this, but it’s indicative of the somewhat sketchy software implementation. Then, unfortunately, the scope’s LCD goes bright blue, with “PC Camera” in the center, and remains that way until you stop using it with the computer. What a waste of backlight, and needless LCD burn-in.

Once everything is working and some time has been spent getting used to it, the software is serviceable enough. Fortunately, I don’t anticipate using the software a lot, as the scope in standalone mode is so well suited for my needs. Some elaborate counting and measurement tools are provided, which could be indispensable to a biologist counting bacteria in a petri dish, or to someone measuring mesh or denier in textile work. I can see an occasion where I might need to confirm the spacing of circuit board holes, but this is icing on a cake that is already under-cooked. Note that you must follow the calibration procedure for on-screen measurements to make any sense.

Video capture on the PC, so far, is a disappointment, although I don’t anticipate needing to use this feature very much. Although the video settings indicate that 1920 x 1080 is the default, when I click Take a Video, a popup tells me to set video resolution to 640 x 480. This setting is found in File > Video Setting > Video Capture Pin, which brings up a dialog in which you can downgrade from HD to this old PC VGA mode from the 1980’s. But this mode doesn’t do anything, either — thus far I haven’t been able to record. In fact, after trying a few settings, the app began displaying a blank grey image, although the “zoom navigation” window still shows a cursor with the image where it should be. So the signal is coming in from the camera, but it’s not getting to the screen. Closing the camera instance and reopening it doesn’t clear things up, but it’s clear the app has crashed ungracefully. For the time being, I won’t expect to be able to capture video. Oh, and the app doesn’t remember to wake up in the last size you set in Windows — instead it wakes up full screen every time, a nuisance on my 49″ UHD monitor.

Perhaps I can capture video on the scope’s memory card, and skip the entire PC software disaster.

When I attempted to calibrate on the PC, all I could ever get was “Can not be empty” in a popup error window. The procedure is so simple I can’t imagine what was “empty.” After a few such attempts, another crash.

So, with some reservations, my HARDWARE rating for now is 4 stars, pending resolution of the vertical adjustment issue.

If I could rate the software separately, I’d give it a 1, but I am reluctant to drag down the rating for the hardware, which is what I was really buying. I didn’t expect great software, since these video products NEVER come with decent software, although obviously they should, but it certainly could be a lot better than this! As a standalone display microscope this is great, and serves all my needs. A simple app that just does one thing very well would have been far preferable to a fancier one that’s unfinished and crashes all the time.

Fortunately, you can use this without any PC or software, or even with HDMI plugged straight into a TV, either of which produces great results. If snapshots and videos work well when I insert a RAM card, then perhaps the PC app will never be missed. Still, it’s a promised capability that fails badly.

 

Super handy for everything small, including getting slivers out. My go to tool for small work. Clear image and smooth adjustments.

 

I have no plans to solder circuit boards. I will not download the measuring software or use an HDMI monitor. I just plan to copy images from the chip to my computer. I got this scope as a tool of curiosity, and it does that very well. It does not have a light “below stage” as biological microscopes do, but I am working on a hack to deal with that.
The big LCD screen is wonderful and the magnification is adequate for my hobby uses. I love the goose neck LEDs, too.

 

Upsides: Very clever device and quite well built; looks like it should survive the rigours of moderate lab use. Works really well; love the illumination arms and the working distance is really good to allow a user to manipulate objects under view. For the price, I found this quite impressive and I’m sure it’ll be put to good use for soldering and other small tasks for which I previously used an optical microscope (for which presbyopia and spectacles were becoming cumbersome). Downsides: Does not come with Mac or Linux software, and I could not get the Windows software to work either. Fortunately, native drivers on my Mac were able to make use of the incoming USB video signals, but I was hoping to us the measurement aspects of the software. I’ll try using it with FIJI, but cannot report on success yet. I suspect that most of the time I will use the LCD screen and not bother connecting to a computer screen, instead capturing images onto an SD card and importing for analysis when required. If I find an old unused HDMI-capable screen, I might make a permanent connection via the dedicated HDMI port (though I’ve heard that when this is done there is no LCD display – not yet proved to myself). Hope this review is useful. A.