Why are WebCams so poor?

I have one of these clamped to my workbench. My vision has never been very good, and as I get older my close-focus thing is going away. More to the point, the parts are getting so small that *nobody* can see them. This makes me feel like an eagle, flying over the board on a sunny day.

The "compact" is great for occasional engineer-type things, inspection and rework. Production has a few of the bigger ones, with turret lenses and stuff, for more serious use.

The compact costs abound $2K, I think. The newer Mantises have great LED lighting and no fan, which tilts the advantage toward buying a new one instead of an old one on ebay.

John

That's what Jim also uses. Still requires a free hand to lift up the glasses though. And it sure is ugly.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Nice! I could warm up to one of these. The ones I had used at a client where top view. You had to look through it like a microscope and the horizontal wobble was terrible.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

P.S.: Why do they make you sign in just to see a brochure? That sure leaves a stale after-taste. Do they want to start the sales pitches later? I'd hate that.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Sometimes a lot. I have used $10 radios as EMI tracers, $5 signal injectors to find stuff that the guys couldn't find with a spectrum analyzer etc. Sometimes cheap doesn't mean it's low quality. Other times it does :-(

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I can't imagine the brochure is very useful; it can't express what you'll *see*.

Without this thing I'd be very frustrated with these tiny parts, kind of like the old fudds who never transitioned from tubes to transistors. We even scope probe under Mantises. If you get one, go for the 6x lens.

Now what we want is a tiny sharp fet probe on some sort of pantographic positioner, so we can safely nail a pin on a fine-pitch part or an 0402 and have it stay there. Maybe I'll do that one day; I have a possibly cool idea for a cheap fF fet probe.

John

Yeah, I just don't like that kind of sales "strategy". It would benefit the image of any company to cut that out, makes them appear more professional.

Tubes can be great. They have a dynamic range from here to the Klondike. I've had instances where any kind of semiconductor just wouldn't cut it. For example, for a shortwave mast preamp. Else it would have been continuing to crawl a steep slippery roof after every major thunderstrom. That was always a white-knuckle job (especially in spring when there was moss on the tiles) but not needed any longer after migrating to a tube amp.

Ok, that's where I cheated and bought the Philips PM8943 FET probe. Excellent performance. Despite the high cost it came in a cheesy case that promptly broke. But it also came with all kinds of miniature connector thingies, most of which are gone by now (worn out). Very handy are the 10x and 100x reducers you can plug onto the tip. Those are indispensable when diagnosing switch mode troubles where there are lots of nasty spikes.

Speaking of FET probes I once made one from a tube (Radar surplus, sold by weight...). The challenge at hand was to be able to measure ultrasound pulses down to the noise floor (meaning no attenuators allowed) while being fully tolerant to the transmit pulse on the same line. That pulse was 170V and we had to measure T/R switch behavior immediately after the pulse. Meaning no diodes either. They did use a "real" FET probe before but it blew the FET probe and the spectrum analyzer input. AFAIR the latter caused a manager there to go ballistic.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Similar here. I have been using a x6 magnifier for ... 13+ years (sigh... when did pass :-). But mine has cost me < $10 at Buerklin in Munich :-).

See it here:

.

You will see what my soldering iron has done to its front edges, and you will not see what it did to my nose (not because my nose is out of focus, it just healed since last time I burned it :-).

Picture taken with a cheap webcam (sub $20), 800x600 capable, pretty sharp (not on this image, too low light and my hand was perhaps not stable enough). Well, if I really need a good macro image I use a good 5 Mpix camera, it sees any detail I might want to see and more.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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I just tried my sub-$20 webcam on the board I am currently in. I was holding it in my hand again, the second biggest issue was to adjust the light by slightly rotating the lamps arm (the useful region was really narrow, either overexposed or too dark), the first biggest was of course the time wasted on the wintel TV to make it take the picture (took a reset in between, that's why I settled for 640x480 this time).

Here they are:

Dimiter

The 2nd one is blurry just like mine are. But the top section in the first picture is pretty darn good, at least good enough for soldering work. Which camera is that? From Logitech?

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

My hand was moving, te focal depth was not too good. If fixed it should be much much better (I was seeing it live on the screen).

No, it is called "Gembird" , I bought it here in Sofia at 28 BGN (14 EUR). I cannot tell whether the lens is plastic, but it does not look it. The case turned out to be stainless steel... Comes with a clip, but well, let me use the missus' mirror, here is a photo:

.

The holes were filled with LEDs which I removed and took the mike out through one of them. There is no other than the automatic control for the LEDs, but it may actually work well for you when soldering; if it does not, well, you can always slaughter them like I did :-).

I think it will be good enough for soldering work, although I have not really used it for that yet.

Dimiter

Oops, sorry the URL was meant to be

...

these rubber made laptop keyboards are way too slow for me, I guess...

Dimiter

Well, you could try with the solder iron like you did one the Buerklin magnifier and on your nose ;-)

Just kidding...

Got this error when trying: The requested URL /mic/wc3.jpg was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Maybe I have to try again tomorrow. Sometimes this happens on servers.

Stainless steel? Wow. You can't get anything like that here in the US unless it is a firesale clearance.

That would be nice. Much smaller than a Mantis scope. Also, my lower back isn't that great anymore and so I like to keep things light in weight.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Interesting. Almost looks like an ancient hair dryer. I have never seen one like this.

Yes, I have that same gripe. Sometimes it freezes on me. But Windows is what slows me down the most. Multi-tasking is IMHO often a joke so I had to install two PCs here in the office, else my productivity would slump.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Yes, but occasionally I would have to schlepp it off the table for space reasons. Mainly when a huge prototype comes in or when calibration is due on the network analzyer.

My lab is not in a huge building on Otis street :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

With the Mantis, you sit up nice and straight, no hunching over, and your nose stays well away from the tools.

John

What kind of working distance do you have? I tinker with watches too and I've been looking for a scope for that. It gets tiresome using a loupe, plus depth perception isn't too good using one eye. I don't need huge magnification, but I do need plenty of working distance. 2-20x zoomable would be ideal, but zoom adds allot to the cost. There are allot of decent enough looking microscopes on e-bay. Maybe Joerg would like something like this:

It's pretty expensive, but it looks decent and has an 8" working distance. You can scroll down and pick from tons of different types, mono, bi, trinocular, all kinds of mounts, eyepieces and lighting junk. The cheaper ones (i.e. the ones that I looked at) start at around $200. Check that feedback rating. ;-)

True, but it cost about the same as your webcam, & actually works. ;^)

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   W  "Some people are alive only because it is illegal to kill them."
 . | ,. w ,      
  \|/  \|/              Perna condita delenda est
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BTW, this is something like what I'd like.

I quote from their claims "This microscope is made by the same technicians and on the same production line as optical instruments for Leica, Zeiss, Nikon and Olympus. It is brand new in factory box. Its retail value is more than $1,600."