Velleman Stereo Batscanner and Ultrasonic Sound Detector

Fun sensor and excellent value. I do a fair amount of SMD soldering and with a Metcal MX-H1-AV this kit took two hours from opening to functionality. Kit planning is excellent. My only critique is that the manuals are on-line which is fine but not set up for download so unless your bench has a computer display or you can routinely read microprint on a cell phone, you need to print the assembly manual. Extremely easy to use, so you really only need to read the users' manual once. Nice audio and it's fairly sensitive.

Recommendations are to follow the direction steps to make it easier to solder. Use a magnifying glass and light for the colors on the resistors. Upon doing inventory of the parts received, 1 Electret Microphone was missing. Everything else was present. Maybe the packer forgot it was the stereo version, lol. Recommendation 2: redesign the board to be more of a square shape so it easily fits into a project box. Because of its odd shape any case would need to be printed. If they provided a case, many enthusiasts would have instantly purchased the case. A solid 3.5 star experience, Haven’t tried it on ultrasonic sounds as of yet but will be sure to update.

This is a fun kit to build, through hole board the parts layout is good easy to follow , it's a nice little tool, having to go online for instructions is cumbersome .

Bat detector was fun to build and actually makes bat echolocations audible. The instructions specify soldering level is 4-requiring considerable skill. The only difficult component installation is soldering the microphones to the detector circuit board. I have built three of these kits and, after building the first one, I made a fixture to hold the microphone as it was soldered to the PCB. I drilled a 15/64" hole in a short wooden dowel (or any piece of wood). The microphone fits loosely but tight enough to keep it positioned while connections are soldered making all assembly steps straightforward.

I have had several before. These were inexpensive kits. This one is much better than any I have used before. Being stereo, you can fairly easily locate the direction of the bats. Although a relatively simple kit, this should not be the soldering project for an beginner. There are a few parts on the board that are hard to solder such as the microphone elements. Unfortunately, the instructions were minimal, again not suitable for a soldering novice. When assembling, use an ohmmeter to check the resistance of the resistors because some of them were hard to interpret the color bands, for example orange and red were virtually indistinguishable. Overall I recommend the kit.

I've soldered many a circuit board and after the 7th resistor, the printed circuit trace lifted off the board! No way I'm going to try to find out where that trace goes and try to jumper it. What a waste of money and time. Unfortunately for me, I waited beyond the 30 day return policy to try to get my money back.

Fun project, works well. I bought and built this to see if anyone nearby was using a high powered animal repel device. There were far fewer animals and birds this year, and I was wondering why. Noticed that an extension corded box on one neighbors lawn disappeared after they saw me sleuthing with headphones and this device. It could have been a repel device, but who knows? Anyway, the real fun happened in realizing that some of the loud ultrasonic signals that I heard through the open bedroom window were actually all kinds of insects in the garden under the window. Thanks for the great electronic kit, very much in the spirit of hobby electronics kits from years ago!

The damn solder area on the mic element leaves little wiggle room even if great care is taken. Intergrated circuits are not cooperative even if care is taken.