Posts from the ‘Electronics’ Category

Microscope images of my eye (by request)

Mar 26 10

by mat

More microscope image of eyes were requested (by Benjie), trying to focus more on the detail of the eye by using external illumination. Unfortunately the camera has some colour problems when not using the built in LEDs, possibly because it attempts compensates for the lack of illumination. Hopefully I am not in danger of someone cloning my retinal scan to gain access to my confidential files.

Black and white microscope image of my eye

Clear reflection of my laptop in a black and white microscope image of my eye

Coloured illuminated microscope image of my eye

Coloured illuminated microscope image of my eye (see the blood vessels)

More microscope images (21)

Mar 20 10

by mat

So I got a little carried away and started to take images of everything with my microscope:

Electronics

Magnified image of an intergrated circuit chip

Magnified image of an surface mount LED

Magnified image of an another integrated circuit chip

Magnified image of yet an another integrated circuit chip

Magnified image of a crocodile clip

Magnified image of a surface mounted resistors

Magnified image of a digital printed circuit board

Magnified image of a digital camera

Magnified image of a camera focussed on the glass

Magnified image of a camera

Magnified image of a headphone

Magnified image of a mobile phone speaker

Magnifieid image of a DVD

Materials

Magnified image of a dry sponge (with some solder burns)

Magnified image of a wet sponge (with some solder burns)

Magnified image of a caramel shortbread biscuit

Magnified image of a flapjack

Magnified image of demin

Magnified image of paper

Eyes

Magnified image of the queen's eye from a £10 note

Magnified image of an eye

Note the reflection in the image of my eye, if you zoom in and enhance you may be able to read what is on my screen which will then possibly lead to the solving of a murder.

DigiMicro 200X Zooming USB Digital Microscope in ubuntu (linux)

Mar 20 10

by mat

I’ve wanted a USB microscope for a long time, and I have finally purchased a DigiMicro 200X Zooming USB Digital Microscope from dealextreme (product link) It only cost $40.23 USD (about £27.34 GBP) which I think is quite reasnoble for the fun and cool photos I’m getting out of it.

DigiMicro 200X Zooming USB Digital Microscope

Quick Review
Advantages

Very Cheap
Easy to setup (plug and play)
Can take some awesome photos, see below
Three illumination settings (full on, half on, off) on top of software compensation

Disadvantages

Controls (lights, zoom/focus and snapshot) are located on the body which make using them difficult if you are trying not to move your sample
The stand is not very stable, tightening it to maximum holds it steady at certain angles for short periods of time
Takes ~ 2 weeks to arrive from dealextreme as they are based in hong kong

Setup

The beauty of this webcam is that it requires no installation with ubuntu 9.10 you simply need to run the software and the camera works! woo! The output of `lsusb` shows the device as:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0c45:62e0 Microdia MSI Starcam Racer

and `dmesg` shows the following:

[22844.064666] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB 2.0 Camera (0c45:62e0)
[22844.080844] input: USB 2.0 Camera as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.1/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/input/input9

Software
Most video programs will pick up the device, I am opting to use a program called cheese which is awesome not only because of the name but also because of its simplicity.

sudo apt-get install cheese

Screenshot of cheese webcam software in action

Lens Cap
Remember to take the lens cap off otherwise you will end up focusing on the plastic cap as shown below. It is fairly obvious if this is the problem as moving the microscope will only change the light levels not the image.