Tip for reading tiny print on components

For the tough cases, I use a Mantis magnifier and give the parts a quick swipe with alcohol or acetone. You can often see the markings as the solvent evaporates.

How close can smart phones focus? I don't have one.

Some dust particles between the function keys on a laptop:

This is about the best I can do with maximum zoom and auto focus on a $100 smartphone holding the phone about 4 inches away; Android supports manual focusing the camera as of version 5 or 6 or something but I haven't found an app to try it with yet (and not all phone hardware supports manual focus)

Den tirsdag den 13. februar 2018 kl. 16.06.00 UTC+1 skrev bitrex:

and for datasheet etc. there googles real time translate

I don't have anything like the Mantis but I have a couple of lenses salvaged from old 16mm projectors. Their magnification and optical quality are far superior to those of ordinary magnifying glasses. 0402 markings are a breeze. As are faded, worn and etched markings on tiny chips.

You too?

Nobody has mentioned an amazing simple trick that works, first apply a layer of Scotch tape.

Who marks 0402 packages?

Not Vishay, and hell they bought up others too.

I have not seen any makred packages since 0603 form factor.

Nope... not me... not seen any caps or resistors of that form factor which were marked.

Oops. Yeah, I meant 0603. Not only are the markings legible but the rough edges of the characters are clearly visible too.

I occasionally pick up an old projector or camera lens at a flea market. They are much better optics than a single-element (usually plastic) magnifier.

I don't want one. You need a cell phone these days, but mine makes phone calls and gets phone calls. About 8 people know my number. No web, no texting, no Facebook, no earbuds playing music all day.

GPS might be useful some day.

Agreed. However, I use a binocular microscope for reading the fine print.

It depends on the camera. The best are autofocus and will focus down to about 5mm. You should be able to find the specs on the smartphone vendors web site.

I currently have a Samsung S6. I carry around a photo album full of photos of customers installations to show prospective customers. I also take pictures of everything I might need to remember, such as serial number tags on equipment, what plug goes where on the back of a computah, prospective equipment purchases with pricing, and funny cat photos. All have been very useful at time. I also have a modest collection of PDF's and document files, that I need for reference. When working on a project that requires inspection, I carry around all the multitude of construction drawings. For example, I'm currently helping with a CNC vertical mill retrofit: All the docs and manuals are on my phone and on the cloud. When I need to show a group of people the photos or docs, I use one of several Chromebooks.

There are also a multitude of apps that I use for common calculations (mostly RF) and measurements (bubble level, location, wi-fi troubleshooting, cellular signal strengths, etc). I don't use these very often, but they're very handy when needed.

You might want to just try a smartphone or better yet, a tablet for such applications. You might find it useful. (I also don't do Facebook, texting, or music, but do use it for Skype).

if he's adamantly against having a smartphone he could get say an iPod Touch 6th gen; it's more or less functionally equivalent to an iPhone 5 or something but without the cellular. It makes a handy pocket camera/computer with WiFi and they're pretty cheap not much more than $130 manufacturer refurb

I wouldn't be without one. It's a rather powerful safety device, too.

We Skype with the granddaughter. We only see her, in person, once a year or so.

Bad advice. ;-) Buy someone's used smartphone and just don't register it. It'll still be good for 911 and you won't have to put up with iOS!

I lied. I just tested my Samsung S6 front facing camera. It will autofocus down to about 40mm. If I turn off autofocus and image stabilization, and use manual focus, it will focus down to about 30mm. No clue on depth of field.

If you want to get closer, you'll probably need an add-on macro lens: I don't have one of these and therefore can't offer an opinion. I'm told they work well if the camera is stabilized with a tripod one uses a Bluetooth wireless shutter trigger.

For taking photos in small awkward locations, I use a USB borescope or endoscope. Something like this: They were cheap enough that I bought an assortment of cable lengths and diameters. 8mm dia works best, but doesn't fit through small holes. I have one with a 10 meter cable, that's useful for wall, conduit and pipe inspections. Picture quality is awful, but that's to be expected from something that small.

My prepaid flipphone makes and gets phone calls. It can also do texts. (I do find texts kind of handy because I can test someone any hour of the day or night and leave them a quick message, without waking them up or pestering them at work).

It has a so called browser, which is worthless. I cant even get a weather radar map on it, so I dont use it.

It does have a camera which takes poor quality pictures, but if I am in a store and want to take a picture of something like a plumbing faucet or a tool, it comes in handy. And I can send that picture to my email, or anyone else's email. A while back we had a major fire in town, and I did not have a camera, but took some pictures with my phone. I emailed one of the good shots to the local newspaper and they used it in the story about the fire. For a low quality camera, it did not look half bad in the newspaper. I kind of think they enhanced it to eliminate the graininess, but it seemed to print well.

This is all the phone I need. All I do wish is that I could get the weather radar, because I am always watching the radar if I am near a computer, when there are storms, because I am a trained weather spotter.

But no smartphones for me. When I am away from my computer, I dont want to be staring at a screen, and I dont use facebook or crap like that. Plus smartphone service is damn expensive.

As far as a GPS, I bought an actual GPS and was not impressed with it at all. It would try to make me take real bad roads, and annoyed the heck out of me with it's constant nagging. The last time I used it, it took me 70 miles in the wrong direction and literally lead me into a cattle pasture. That's when I threw it in the trash.

The reverse of that is why I was reluctant to have, not only a smartphone, but any mobile phone for a long time. I don't want to be accessible to everyone wherever I am and whenever someone feels the urge to call me on some pretext. My (dumb) mobile phone number is known only to a very few selected people and they have strict instructions not to give it to anyone else.

The advantage of the Apple product for doing "real work" is that the iPod's responsiveness and load times, etc. is way better than any Android device in the same price range. Apple does the hardware/software integration thing really well, the quad-core Snapdragon processor that e.g. my Moto has looks way better on paper than the dual-core A8 the iPod uses, but Android is a bloated pig of an OS where it seems like no matter how much memory and clocks you throw at it it does its best to make everything feel like you're slogging thru mud

I got my first cell phone around 1999 when I wasn't much more than 20 years old, I hardly remember a world where they didn't exist.

Most of my day-to-day communication happens via text message and email, and even email is considered pretty old-fashioned among the kids these days.

That works. I have several friends who do not have or want a cell phone for talking, but have tablets, un-activated smartphones, and iPod Touch devices. The industry wants users to think of a smartphone as a cell phone with a built in camera and computah. Instead, they consider theirs a camera with a built in computah and no cell phone. Much of my use of my Samsung S6 revolves around using the camera for record keeping and the computah section for apps and storage. My conventional digital cameras are collecting dust.

One problem and complaint about the iPod Touch series is the lack of GPS. GPS is very handy for mapping and navigation. The best work around has been a BlueGoof connected external GPS puck. Even so, some of the mapping apps don't work with every external device.

Unfortunately, I just discovered that the Samsung S6 camera has a focus problem: If I hadn't read all about it on the internet, I would never have known that it didn't work.

You're about 40 now and you're already starting to feel the generation gap, eh? What about us old farts in our 50s, 60s and

I've just finished talking with my youngest son who's 2000 km away in Delhi doing the final semester of his graduate course in architecture. We spent the better part of an hour while I guided him in image processing. We did it by voice call (landline on my side) and by exchanging emails back and forth because I don't use a smartphone and can't do it via WhatApp or Instagram. My kids are used to it and don't grumble too much.

Sometimes I use TeamViewer for such sessions but the internet service here is often too slow for that.

I have two iPod Touchs. Horrible UI and unreliable garbage. The things are always dropping the Internet connection and hanging when playing audio. My old Android phones never do, or if they do, they recover by themselves. The iPods don't. iTunes seriously sucks, as well.