Welcome to another Voltlog product review and in this video we are taking a look at the DytSpectrumOwl PCB thermal camera and let me tell you from the start that if you do a lot of PCB repairs or if you do any kind of product thermal characterization, your life would be so much better if you’ve had a tool like this and I’ll show you why in a few minutes.
The company that makes this product is DianYang Technology and I guess the name of the product is DyTSpectrumOwl model number CA-10, this is a 260×200 pixel resolution IR camera sensor with a 25 fps refresh rate and manual adjustable focus lens which allows it to focus from 20mm up to 2m, that 20mm close range focus and the 25hz refresh rate are very interesting features and I’ll talk more about that in a second.
I received the unit very well packed in a double cardboard box and all I have to do is to fix the vertical stand to the base and attach the camera. While doing this I couldn’t help to notice the very good construction quality, they’ve used anodized aluminium and metal parts everywhere, everything is nicely machined, rounded corners, really nice attention to detail, like for example , the work surface has an insulating rubber coating which would prevent shorting something on the PCB you are testing and on the bottom side they have nice rubber bumpers to prevent it from sliding around. Inside the box they include a small screwdriver that you use for attaching the vertical stand to the base, a couple of spare screws and a USB type-C to USB Type-A data cable.
Camera has a USB Type-C interface, looks like the shell is made from plastic and painted the same metal gray color and you get a single on/off button with a status LED on the top. On the sensor side you get this big focus adjustment wheel and we’ll play with that later on when we get to look at a PCB but since we are talking about PCBs let me introduce the sponsor of this video
Raised to its maximum setting, you get about 15cm of clearance between the work surface and the camera and that’s plenty if you ask me and you also get the option of moving the stand to the left of the work surface by using these mounting points. There are a few adjustments on the standm you can raise or lower the camera by sliding on the vertical rod but you can also do fine adjustment with this thumbwheel at the top. Then you can move back and forward from this adjustment and you can also adjust the angle of the camera so you can pretty much get this into every angle you want but I would probably use this looking straight down at a PCB.