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weee! waiting for this! :P edit: i knew it..them sides are conductive...and when it touches your hand while youre probing..its creating a resistance...and probably capacitive coupling aswell...that explains the shitty measurements...and why it was showing a resistance when you touched one probe leg, and the metal "shield"

12:32 "The acoustics suck currently" yet sounds better than most RU-vid channels.

It must be just me, and I ask myself why, I really don't know the answer. Why do I have a negative emotional response to watching someone destroy products? Teardown is an understatement. I've had a passion for electronics ever since I as a child and gained my qualifications from RMIT. It was one of the most memorable times and also one of the most brutally demanding study experience. The work load and study were relentless, and the assignments to the teachers were tough. At that time only the seriously dedicated students made it through. It was well known for the quality of students it produced and was a key place for Telecom (Telstra) head hunters. I grew up repairing everything and anything, so much so, that the meticulous detail was at times bordering on OCD. For example, if I took something apart and inadvertently broke something (which happens) I would dwell on it and beat myself up. We've all tried to repair something and accidentally doubled down on a fault with the slip of a probe, essentially creating two faults or more. Sure, it's part of being a technician and those mistakes - well you learn to live with them and move on. When they turned off analog TV, how many of us threw out perfectly good televisions, or in my case, I just stripped them down and kept the main boards. Yet there is something that goes against the grain of the creative process. I believe repairing equipment is a creative process, it's an art form and when you have a win, the joy and elation is exuberating. You can actually feel that rush of adrenaline. To me it is a creative art form. Would you get paint stripper and pour it over a Picasso to find out whats underneath? Sure these tweezers LCR's are cheap and who cares? It's all in the name of science to see what's inside. Yet there is this unfortunate brutality, like looking at a train wreck. For me it has a double visually horrific impact. I am also a musician and have the same reaction when I watch musicians destroy instruments. Have you ever watched a musician smash a guitar on stage just for show or what about the idiot on youtube that gets a new Roland AX-Synth, and just to boast channel ratings, strikes it against a log of a tree. Axes are use for trees, so this genius sacrificed a work of art. Nothing was gained just another fatal annihilation of a beautiful instrument. I know, because I own one and they are not cheap. This throw away society, has become the norm and the young grow up without giving it a care. A new phone every six months, never taking care of the old one. It is a real shame because this was never how it use to be. During war times things were scarce and the last generation was taught to preserve and cherish possessions. Sure we have a dying breed of enthusiasts. However, as time marches on they are disappearing. To see this teardown, this brutal violent destruction it proves very little. Sure the host holds little value for the item knowing he can purchase another - it may have even been a free gift hoping for a good review. What about the countries that live off electronic waste - salvaging parts off circuit boards whose economic income is purely container loads of e-waste, shipped in because someone can make a dollar. These countries live in and on nothing but rubbish, not only does e-waste get shipped in by container loads as part of their economy, children scavenge through bags of trash for plastic, cans and cardboard. They live in pure filth. Global electronic waste up 21% in five years and recycling isn’t keeping up. Someone, who lives on at best less than a dollar a day, would cherish that item. To see thee LCR Tweezers destroyed, for no other reason, just to see what's inside to my mind is unnecessary. Again, it goes against the grain of everything that is innate to the human psyche. I ask the question, what was really gained? For me it's hard to watch. It's like watching fingernails being pulled, it's anti-art. I visually repelling. It's physical graffiti. Just because it is cheap is beside the point. If it was an Agilent Oscilloscope, that had the same warning that it could not be opened, no one would open it. Doesn't anyone else feel that sames sense, that feeling of repulsion. Or am in in the the minority? It is my problem and really I should go with the heard mentality and resist what seems naturally wrong to my mind. I need to meet and accept the throw away world and run with the pack.

The ic on oled board is probably lis2dh12 (accelerometer used in ts80 and ts100. Crazy cheap). They both share i2c bus so it must be accelerometer. Also there should be 3 caps for accelerometer, they omitted one. Soo much space saving and component saving. Could have been a really good product. I hope they will fix all this in next version. If they do i won't mind to pay about 30-40$ more if it will have better precision, resolution, secondary Parameters without the frequency gen and etc...

Many thanks, Dave! The poor accuracy specs will be due to the [presumably] 1% or worse tolerance of all those resistors that I assume do the range changing? But more importantly, I can now see my way clear to doing what you mentioned early in the video - make up a short~ish patch cable to pass the probe wires [and even the batteries?] to a higher-class benchtop LCR meter. Fundamentally it is the probes I want - the measurement electronics can be on a shelf over the bench. Again, thanks! BTW, don't beat yourself up - the images you gave us are more than adequate to see the important bits...

Glued in batteries that are irreplaceable without total destruction of the product? That's even worse than Apple! Forget measurement (in)accuracy, I'd never buy a product with batteries sealed in like this. Why'd they even bother with replaceable probe tips?

I'm glad I'm just in time. And thank you again!

One of the unidentified ICs must be the accelerometer.

Side cutters and a soldering iron: the engineering man's alternative to pliers and a blow torch.

If that was made twice the size they could have made it so much better and then be competitive with other more precise LCR tweezers and have a better price. Add to that their implementation of the magnets to give that beautiful feel to the use. They could have given other tweezers a real run for their money.

I'm not sure the "couldn't do reverse polairity" on the LEDs is a bad thing, often when testing LEDs one of the things I am trying to determine is whether a LED was put in backwards.

Very neat. If the price drops to say $40 I'd grab one. Fantastic teardown, loved all the detail.

Dave, you really know how to entertain a nerd!

A good portion of the price of the Smart Tweezers I would imagine are the the ultra low-noise op amps in the front end which are made by Analog Devices.

Best repair video on RU-vid. :)

I can see using the product to initially and quickly trace down a problem then unplugging the electronic module and plugging in a modified cable to a higher precision Bench LCR meter for detailed info.

you had me at 'destructive'

That's not rigid flex, that's just standard PCB with custom flex soldered to it. Rigid-Flex PCB usually mean that flexible layer is embedded between normal FR4/rigid layers. Little chipie is most likely accelerometer for tilt detection.

You have such a high set of standards for your videos that I think you are a bit harsh [on yourself] at times. This video was stellar, man. Seriously, this was fan-flippin-tastic!!

Well worth the destructive teardown.

My guess would be that those two mystery SMDs are one for each of the 3-pin headers... maybe I2C drivers for two separate channels? They're bridging to the display board so perhaps one for output to the OLED display, one for input from the capacitative button?

Nice teardown, what about the charger in the end of the tweezers?

Nice teardown, that you see the microscope image on a screen is a huge advantage, because you see it like we will in the end. I still think send it for free to someone who would love to get the pieces back together, there are ways more people that can't even dream about what you call cheap, also in your neighborhood. Anyways, thanks for showing Dave 👍 Edit: Maybe you could start an Arduino based open-source project in the forum for an affordable alternative.

The wires might be just so the button works through the case?- make your body circuit ground so the presence of your finger near the button pulls it capacitively to circuit ground? And it knows you pressed it? That case looks quite thick , and it the edge connector has only one plate, something has to form the other plate of the capacitor

Opened like eating crab !...." 65ZY " is 3v LDO.....closest i've seen an OLED, now that was a tear down.

Could be two high res AD to synchronous phase capture drive V- I phase relationship. As the processor AD channels are not likely capable of phase resolution.

After you threw out the reverse engineer challenge I got to thinking if you had ever considered throwing out design challenges to the viewers to see who can come up with the best design for X then we all get to review and walk thru the design decision choices. Maybe be a huge can of worms but maybe fun

Great! "Built down to a size". I can't help but wonder if it could have a bit better accuracy for a similar or marginally higher price if it didn't have such fancy folded over construction. Definitely cute though!

If you need just tweezers, you can use Keysight handheld LCR tweezers.

Thank you

You had me at destructive.

That's a lot of effort put in packing up all of this in a such tiny form factor, sacrificing at the same time precision and usability. Strange design philosophy. Reminds me of some apple products. Looks and design above usability and repairabilty.

This is the moment I was waiting for

Thanks

My guess that two identical chips on the control board are BMSes, one per li-ion.

4:44 I wish for good fortune for myself and EEVblog

Surely plugging those tweezers into to a separate unit by a nice flexible silicone cable, is a FAR better way to make a well engineered (and cheap!) version.

i sorta like the way your back in the old place and things aren't fully set up

Wow nice ST micro - up to 16bit ADC built in!!

A3JK is probably the charge and power control for the batteries.

You weren't kidding when you said destructive Dave. God, that things minced meat!

I think those little "shield" wires are to make the touch button work

Looks like you have room to mount things Mr. Carlson's Lab style 😉

Hola EEVLOG yo tengo una pregunta ,qué sitio web recomiendas para ver los datashet de los circuitos integrados…

Great !!!😁👍

Hey Dave, why are you still using the tagarno over the Chinese C-mount cam and screen combo you reviewed a few years back? Just curious, since the c-mount cam was better in many ways than the tagarno overall.

Geez, with 4 wire, it'd be possible to try some custom solutions. My friend (specialist in impedance spectroscopy) designed STM32 based Impedance analyser. It would be nice to make conversion to LCR and merge with such a nice tweezers.

Next time you salvage a big flat screen from the dumpster you should hang it on the wall with a camera feed from outside as a substitute window.

Perhaps you can suspend the greenscreen from the ceiling?

17:46 11 timers? Wow, 4XX STM family is really powerful. Oh, wait, including two watchdogs and systick. Nice marketing way to count timers. Huh, technically they're kinda right.

Hello Dave Thx for this teardown. For a daily Hobby or in school use it is a fine and well done tool. It is like the 7$ compent Tester. It is a Good Example for a small tool. In the Past Miniware was a Open Source Company. Is the LCR Meter a Open Source tool?

When u analyze a intel processor at microscope, can u see individual transistors inside with a professional microscope?

You mentioned a 3D model when discussing the magnet operation. Is there a link to the model? I can't find one on their site.

I would get that just for the probes, and use them with my Applent AT825...

Is the stuff on the flex PCB (Photomos relay etc.) battery protection stuff ?

How do they electrically bond those chip on glass bits down if there are no flywires?

Those little ones definitely look like amps to me. Very similar as headphone amp chips from max.

Get some light green ESD material and cover the entire lab with it.

You didn't trace the flex in the probes. Can we make a lead to plug into a better multi meter.

It's a very attractive form-factor and price. Perhaps it's not so precise, but I wonder what makes it imprecise (component tolerances, thermal dependencies, battery voltage, linearity or ?). Can't they make it such that it can be calibrated?

If you can still operate in a much smaller lab space, the choice to save $40k/yr is a "no brainer". 😄 Great video, Dave.

19:26 at the lower side of the board, where that little copper wire comes through that hole, is that a bodge? Or a repair? That pcb trace suddenly ends/ disappears?

Agreed make the cpu unit bigger/longer and open source it ... nothing wrong with having a few extra inches :-)

huh. yeah, it'd be nice to see the probes with better-quality...well, the rest of it

This thing really puts me in the mind of Samsung phones: gorgeous hardware, absolute crap software. I'd be willing to bet all the inaccuracy issues could be solved with a firmware update. Major kudos to the engineers behind this awesome little gizmo.

I have a separare bench to solder, Dave has a separate lab to solder :-)

Is there a company like jlcpcb that make flat flex? Only need a couple for a repair

Not the black gunk of death then, disappointing! (/s, loved this video)

Have your green screen pull down from the ceiling!!!

has anyone tried the UNI T tweezers? seen them on Ali express. look interesting and not expensive

What about the MASTECH MS 8911 ?

Hey, you are too comfy with the specialized tools. Did you Forgot the old and effective desoldering whack to the board?😅

With the new NVIDIA RTX Broadcast Engine there is no longer the need for a Green Screen. Maybe it is an option. Especially if space is an issue.

Dave, there’s some new auto-masking (like green screen) using some fancy AI. Nvidia is touting it for their new RTX 3000 series- apparently it’s real-time, looks great, and even processes audio to remove background audio/noise (!). Pretty useful these days with remote work, but could be perfect for a small shop environment where a green screen would be really cumbersome.

I was considering to buy this then my cheapo instincts kicked in and ordered tweezer probes for my Fluke instead.

Build your own

😉 So many youtubers are recently excusing themselves for the "poor" quality of their footage because of some non-perfect audio or video setup. Don't! It's just perfect. It is the content which matters and not if your audio is at precisely -8.36547 dB, your white balance at exactly 4326.567576 K. I had to start to upload huge amounts of video footage for my students, and I am so far behind in quality that I get a bad conscience when I hear these self-complaining...

Destroying a beatiful and elegant device. How to make a grown man cry. But someone has to do it.

No fuse protection? Isn't that a bit dangerous?

If you play this video backwards, it's a repair video.

That thing on 9:37 is a Netflix board

The same as a headphone jack, with microphone included.

3JK maybe Low voltage switch STG5223

Would'nt Stay On...ROFL...Wow Magnets works as Temp Screw holders..Rich Analog Peripherals...lol..For the Price it's Perfect..!!!

I don't think that thing is cheap or usefull if it costs $70US. On eBay you can get a DE-5000 with tweezers and power brick for $108US. That is a real LCR meter.

Aussies guinea pigs are not allowed to protest "its illegal and selfish" as we read in news :)

Doesn't come with a USB-C to USB Charging cable. That's a big downside to me as I have nothing that uses USB-C and so I have no cables. I have to go to Wallyworld and buy one! ugh

👍👍

"Sorry for the crudity of the lab, i didn't have time to paint it or build it scale"

Do a LCR meter comparision Dave c'monnn

No R in Canada dave :-)

So why is Dave moving back to his old lab?

Why not design a better Head for this thing? Would be nice..

But Could it run DOOM? Seeing as someone got it running on a pregnancy test, might as well see about this

I find tweezer tools gimicky and too limited in practical application. I'd rather stick to my old-school DMM with ProbeMaster leads. I'd like the tweezer tool better if it had a bluetooth connection to a standalone display unit or cell phone (with an app). That would get rid of "tiny screen itus" meaning that your phone (or other display) could show larger numbers and more info without having to worry about holding the tool at just the right angle to be able to read it. It was fun to see the teardown. Always interesting to see how things work. I wouldn't buy one though.

not bad, not bad. but will it run doom?

Will the next video be something special?

mini company put that oled screen on their product and it dies very soon. I have their screw driver 2 pcs and both oled screen death. I bought from ali express again.

I would have had the tweezer contacts double as charging contacts. Have a stand that supplies 5v and just plop them in. Use the accelerometer to determine that its vertical ans start charging. 😃

i was considering buying such but these china made tweezers have no history of long term use in that if the battery quality is bad you have unserviceable tweezers. The auto ID function is appealing and is it worth the gamble for the money?? ... my thoughts.