Hey YouTube, I just thought I'd share a few hints and tips When it comes to putting in one of these DSO138s together I I Look at the forum on the JTEC website, sorry for my shake your hands just for a second I'm just trying to get some off this camera off the back of it I Looked at the forum and there's all sorts of people have all sorts of issues. We're putting these together, but I Have found that generally 99% of the time these these boards are fine So I'm here a few little tips that might just save you some time while you're doing it And I'm gonna put this camera down into I'm not such a shaky Shaky place Okay, right the first thing is It says in the instructions that you want to Test all of these with a meter Now I think that's a ridiculous thing in some ways. I suppose it makes sense, but it's a ridiculous thing to do especially if Especially if you're busy busy making these things all these are populated all these are done these boards There's a few people have asked me for them and there's also I do a little bit of charity working And some of this is going off Through you center. Well, let me just get that set up so and So what I thought I'd share with you is a few of the few of the tips of these now These are the sort of things you want to check It's like they're little switches There should be eight pins there And I know my camera is not very good So it's gonna find it hard to see that there are eight pins there Right check that in there, but on this one there's one missing now If you put this together you can see the one that's missing on there Sorry, I've been doing my garden today. You see my nails a bit rubbish Yeah, I think you can see there's a pin missing there That will ruin your day Because by the time you get round to putting this on you would have probably Spent the time putting the SMDs on the surface mount devices And then you'd have put your resistors on and then you'd have put your capacitors in And by the time you've got your ceramic capacitors in that's when I'd say then you want to put your switches in probably before You solder the ceramic capacitors. That means you can put the board upside down Do all your soldering And the switches are stopping you from pushing down and bending the capacitors and you know more sorts so Check these because that kind of ruining day that that one I'm not to talk with the distributor about and Because I've got some spares of these but the spares that I sent up for have all got longer So it's going to be an odd, but I do have a couple of boards that I had a problem with solder It was a Terrible solder especially good solder, but it turned out to ruin Ruin my day on a couple of boards. You know, sorry to put that out of the way Now with the SMDs I see a lot of people suggesting that you should solder the pads first I don't think you should do that in my experience. I tried one And all it meant was I had a right pickle trying to balance the SMD on the bit of soldered area It was a pain. So what I found is you just use some flux Every book flux I use this stick here. I'll just dab it in As you can see look while you used and this I only use this flux for these boards really Little bit of flux and you just put it on the pads Do we put them on all of the SMD pads all of them? including the including the chip and the voltage regulator there but the SMD put the little smear of the flux on all of these and then you can place starting off, you know, you gotta You get a little list like this. So I'd start off with a 10k. Normally what I do is I have this sat here Sit it there and I find my little strip, you know The 10k I know I need six of those. So I tip them out here And I can start placing all all the SMDs Get everything placed on the end on the SMDs before you start soldering And I normally find it easier to have my soldering iron here Right here, of course I got my little cleaning Here rather than use the sponge, all that happens with the sponges Some people say they like the sound of it, but if you're into the sound of it, okay fair enough But if you want to keep the same temperature pretty much of your iron and use it in an austral way once you've done this I would use one of these because this doesn't affect the temperature too much It does slightly but not as much as a cold wet sponge And then yeah, so then soldering the SMDs. Take your time. I normally go down one side first On everything. Everything I get down one side and I'll turn the board and I'll do the next side And I do this every time like this now I'm going to ballpark it but over 50 of these things I've built And then once I've done that I start I start with the resistors. Now this is why I decided to make this quick video because It's this time where Transistors on the other and then the resistors now. I'm lucky. I've got one of these meters here And this meter here comes with these babies Which means it's very easy for me to just drop my resistor in there. I get to see what the value is I look on here and they get to see where I'm supposed to place it. I'm so shaky. What is wrong with me? All right, let's put that down Ship on wires out of the way so we don't just run away Okay, so I know I put the iron down there. I wouldn't be long enough for these boards here. I just I just put these boards here So I could just just show you that there's an old bunch there These are all made. They're all tested Not calibrated yet the screens are long and I'm just like to ship them out of the way I didn't make the bag of biscuits that run underneath So and and this is what I find really really useful when you're When you put in these Resistors as you can see some of the resistors have more than one always go From the number so if that's so let's say that's our rate So find our rate on here find our rate on the board And I'm going to put it in what's happened to the light And then the next one is r12 Don't Find r12 here. Don't be looking through this for r12 But as it comes up that's a diode we're not going to use that but as it comes up You know If you've got one of these that's great. It makes life a lot easier Then trying to do it with a normal meter Putting the wires on the probes Putting the probes on Uh, and then let's say if I got our rating and the next one turns out it's r So basically, yeah And put them in an order, you know, don't um You can only put them in in the order that you come out on here but With the capacitors I tend to go for the ceramic first And I put all the 100 nanofarads in They're the bigger ones but more than 100 nanofarads in a part from 1011 I tend to leave one of these out just because of the way the the pins bend So I put the whole lot in first all the capacitors not the electrolytics just the ceramics All the capacitors in After I put in the inductors you got three inductors you got two diodes I put those in directly after the resistors um And then the capacitors all the 100s in And again with that um because the 100s start with c1 c9 I pick out a hundred I put in c1 Next one c9 not c1 and then c20 and then because then I don't know what I'm looking for I know that if I pick up another 100 and I've already done c9 I look on here c9 is done. I'm then looking for c14. There c10 Or c11 or c14 depending on which one's next so you don't have to keep Or where do they get to where do they get to and that's the same sort of theory as for the resistors Put them in in an order and just keep this half game without order and it will make your life A lot easier doing it like that Um, and then you know once you've got the um the inductors in the the ceramic capacitors are in Put the the transistors in the the um transistors And we got voltage regulators We got positive and minus Uh, it's the seven nine. Hello five is the minus and seven seven eight. Hello five is the positive the positive Get these in the uh Yes, I think it's eight eight five oh goes there and the uh, I knew the one goes there the One four.  I would also put the switches in I just press them all in of course you check these already before you started because if one of these is nacked If there is a pin missing it's not going to work Um But I checked those first. I wouldn't try to check every component works first because that's impractical I even say that on the j-tech website Um that they don't check that they just check them at the board is not got any faults itself And then put these in make sure that none of the legs are bent make sure they're all nice and straight because If you either get it in you got a bent pin That's a pain to get it back out again if you've soldered it in and you've got a pin That's not in probably that is enough to give you a bit of a stress out Because it's going to be a blooming pain in the back side trying to get the solder off and get it out without damaging anything So just check these first Make sure you get these pins and nice everything else is pretty much easy enough Um if you're building it for yourself The usb doesn't actually do anything at this stage. So you don't need to put that in Um, but if you do What I find is it's um, I warm the inside once it's pressed through Check the pins on these as well Because if you do want it in there and if it ever does become useful in the future You want to make sure that you haven't got any bent pins here And then put that in Heat up. I heat up the insides first And then I just put the solder on and just roll it across the top until it gets a nice connection And that's the same for these as well. A lot of people struggle with these. I've seen some of the The bigger name people on youtube who have built one of these have said that they've not bothered doing the ends Because the ends are a pain in the back side But if you do the ends before you do any of these pins here It does make life easier. It really really does and if you warm get your clean solder on Clean tip and if you warm the inside first Make sure that's nice and warm get to the outside and have some solder on there And then you should find that that makes a connection do the same Each end first because these are normally dead easy. Sometimes there is a pin that doesn't solder that well And you do have to have a little bit messing around And it's probably quite good If you're armed with one of these solder suckers Because at least then if you do get big glob across and you can't just keep cleaning the tip and Drawing it back out again cleaning the tip. You can warm it up and you know So allowed out and and do it again So I'd say that's a really good investment. It's a solder sucker Um Ignore just get Where is that bag of these things in it? Here's another one Ignore the um, there's a whole bunch of them sent out Where a whole bunch of things sent out With this note. I already did a video. I asked if anybody else knew anything about the notes and no one said anything That note itself is a mistake. It says Why have I got the shakes? What's going on? Um, it says Erata That means error, I believe Uh jp jp3 and jp4 In the notes, basically it's saying don't solder these but this is actually the error You should be sold in jp3 and jp4 and you don't solder jp5 and jp6. Okay, so if you get one of these just ignore it I'll put it in I don't know what they were on but they uh, that was a big boo boo I've confirmed that Even though I had to tell them Even at j-tech they saw It's a language barrier slightly and um, it still had some confusion, but Like I said, all of these kits I've built over the last couple of days They all had the error, but I've sold it jp4 jp3 wherever it is jp3 and jp4 and they all work I did try not doing that and I tried the other side jp6 and jp5 and it didn't work No good at all. He's have a blank screen. It lights up, but nothing happens on it and soldered it soldered these two and it worked fine So just ignore those There is that written there Um And that's about it Oh, and another thing. Yeah, I see how people struggle when it comes to these pins that come through from the The connector here Now normally what because I've had some errors with these things I tend Just to solder this I soldered this and then I test it if it all works Then I get on to soldering these because it can be a bit of a pain, but again If you heat around this side first get that nice and warm Go across the top heat this up and get the solder on You'll end up with a nice ball on here Every now and then a bit might go on to there. Don't use the soldering. I'm trying to get it off Just let it cool down a bit and just Click it off being out and it will go. Okay, it'll be nice and clean there still Let me just show you a quick video. It looks 16 minutes And you can get These it's nice and easy to get these but it makes it a nice good connection And of course that's not gonna it's not gonna pull out or or do anything And toward there Also for these when you're putting these in These headers or when you're putting these the insert parts here the males I find that it's good But if you've got something That's incredibly dirty. Sorry But just place them in Put that across the top Which means you can turn the whole thing over and place it down without the moving You've still got the pins sticking through and you can just do one one on each Same on here one on each And then turn it over have a look make sure it's lined up if it's not just put your fingers under line it up Make sure it sits flush Same for these Twist it slightly if you need to once it's warmed And then get the second piece on simple Nice and easy and of course with your electrolytics If you save One of the like the longer leg when you cut it and then you can use that to make your hoop For the uh for the test The test frequency the one kilohertz test frequency Yeah, I think that's about it And Yeah, don't solder these little LEDs too long. It can kill them quite easily That's it That's it. I think I'll cover just about everything there Yeah So if you're doing these, I wish you all the best of luck and well, you shouldn't really need luck these are yet to be cleaned Once I do my smd's I tend to use a little bit of alcohol To just clean the board with a brush I use what I call a yard a yard broom toothbrush These are like cheap toothbrushes general toothbrushes. I believe It's not the same as one. I got my normal toothbrushes got like like 10,000 bristles But really really fine, but I use one of these To clean this up not with all the components on there just with the smd's just get rid of the flux out of the way Using the alcohol brush it out of the way And there you go, that's clean board and when I finished Um, I'm just doing this batch first these 10 and then I'll clean the whole lot before I calibrate and put the screens on The screens I tend to keep one that's made up So I don't have to make each screen for each one. I just keep one that's made up So once I've got it, I can just test it Um, of course, I do my voltage test first across the ground To the 3.3 volt that you should see coming out of this Um I check like I'm a 3.3 volt once I've got that short out where you're supposed to 3 and 4 Um, and then I put the extra bits on like the usb I then sold these bits I um I then put this uh, this other Uh connector in for the power Because I only use this one to start off with Yeah And that's it and you should have a pretty easy time of it and I don't know if well You weren't prepared to notice but every one of my resistors goes in the correct way around So you should be able to read all the resistors all the capacitors you should be able to read from this angle Well, you can't even see that you should be able to read from this angle Except all the resistors are in the correct way around so you can read from left to right Um, and that just makes sure it gives me it makes sure I place them nicely As you can see on that board everything's placed beautifully And it is everything should be run in line Oh, I say that oh no, no it is. Yeah, I was gonna say it looks like the The uh crystal might be slightly off, but it's not actually it's perfectly in line It's just the way the shadow was hitting it And that will um, that will make for a really nice pleasing pleasing to look at board So anyway guys, if you got that far you got any more questions about any problems with these things, um I've managed to get through quite a few I've actually fixed a couple as well that were Um, not working correctly uh, one I just like loads of rubbish going across the screen and turned out there was a problem with one of the capacitors on C10 C11 I hope any if maybe if you're gonna build one of these just you've found some of these tips helpful These when you put these um variable capacitors in I suggest you just put one in and have a little bit of solder on on the end of your thing and just keep your finger on the bottom only give it a second or two Just get it so it just stays in place make sure it's nice and in place do that one next to it You know do a pin two of it and go out to pin one do the same thing when you put the next one And just hold it in your fingers a little bit of solder on there and just get it so it stays in place Make sure it's nice and level And do that I'm sure most users will know all these things anyway, but for those guys out there I think you know I've built in one of these but I think it might be a bit of a nightmare Um, I think I've pretty much covered just about everything on there. These are there easy You can do this once you've got the switches in um, and let's literally just put it in Turn it over like that push the board down make sure you've got one pin through a little bit of solder turn it over put your finger on And then you can on the bit that you've got on just warm it up let it clip into place So you know it's all nice and firm into place a little bit of solder there a little bit of solder there and then just Gently solder that up When it comes to soldering less is more Not big blobs don't need big blobs Just need to a little time to get a nice solder on there And it's all good. You see the way I've done these look Like I said, I just warm up the inside Um, and then just roll the soldering on across the top And you just warm up the inside there So that's nice and warm roll it across the top with a little bit of solder and you end up with a nice little Little tiny blob on each and then you just do the little tiny bits there You don't really need it because this doesn't actually do anything As far as I can tell from the jtech thing jtech website. It's just there for future use I forgot to mention when it comes to soldering these Again the same as You know for the for the female side Just pop it in put a little tiny bit of solder there. I don't know what your solder's like This is quite good. There is a little tiny bit of spit can come off it So what I tend to do is when I'm soldering I just stick a little bit of card across the top And I always solder the row closest to the screen first I start at one end. I start this one Um, I just peg it into place both sides make sure it's not in nicely And I go from the left hand side because I'm right-handed I do the next one to it I don't do it. So then I've done part of one side part the other because then you can end up bridging Which makes it a pain if you just go down Blah blah blah like that and then do this This part closest to you It just means you're going to get in less of a pickle and if there are any splat bits that come off I know there's a little peel off screen cover here But if it is going to go out to somebody it's a lot nicer if there's no splat on that before they peel it off So you just place a little bit of card over the top And that keeps it good and when I form the um When I form the Just trying to see what I've got a bit I chucked out I chucked out all the bits I had in here Um, but if I just get one of these electrolytics And if you can just imagine I just take the and I just bend it around here Literally just bend that around so I've got my shape off the bit. That's cut off Um, and then that's what I use for the uh for the hook for for the test signal I'll just put a minute around there. So if you've got a solder sucker there comes in handy for a couple of things If you've got this far, cheers for watching If you've got any questions, stick it in the comments And I will gladly if I can help you out Cheers guys. Bye


Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us. Self-awareness is important to leaders for a few reasons. First, it helps us take stock of our skills, both strengths and weaknesses. Second, self-awareness helps us understand how others relate to us. Third, knowing ourselves is important to identify what is important to us so that we can communicate that to others. Take a cue from Ralph Waldo Emerson and think about what lies within. His quote comes from Adam Grant's new book, Think Again, where the first four chapters talk about understanding our own thinking. Lead well this week.