Digital Eyepieces for Microscopes? 19
tfiedler asks: "I'm trying to find a low cost digital eyepiece for my microscope, around $200 or so in cost, and have ran across very little useful information. I want something that can be plugged into my video capture card, so RCA or S-vid output is a requirement. I've found the following two products. The barrel for my microscope is 18mm in diameter. Does anyone have other suggestions, or any experience with the ones at the mentioned URLs? Additionally, has anyone done anything like this with a webcam?"
Since you mention "webcam" (Score:2)
on google [google.com] or even your old pal thinkgeek [thinkgeek.com]
Re:Since you mention "webcam" (Score:1)
Not just microscopes (Score:5, Informative)
Scopetronix good (Score:2)
Bugscope (Score:2)
http://bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu/ [uiuc.edu]
Of course, you might be thinking a little smaller than a million-dollar microscope (estimated cost, since it didn't come out of my pocket).
I've been working on this myself. (Score:4, Informative)
Have you tried Edmund? (Score:4, Informative)
Edmund...ah...what a catalog.
Re:Have you tried Edmund? (Score:1)
Commercial solutions (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.vaytek.com/cameras.htm
What about a QX3? (Score:2)
Oh and then there's Motic [motic.com] who apparently make a somewhat better product and have a site that doesn't want to load for me right now...
Old Quickcams seem to work well for this. (Score:4, Informative)
That's just the beginning of the fun. After opening the Quickcam case, you'll find that the lens barrel unscrews completely, exposing the bare CCD. This makes it easy to mount in all sorts of optical projects. Mount it in your favorite telescope for astral or terrestrial viewing. Some folks have even placed negatives and microfilm directly against the CCD for contact imaging. I haven't personally played with a microscope application but it should work just fine for that too.
A bit of quick Googling will turn up plenty of Quickcam modification links. But, why are webcams an option if you need Composite or S-video output?
Re:Old Quickcams seem to work well for this. (Score:3, Interesting)
My old Quickcam VC fell a long ways onto a tiled floor, which broke the ball housing. So I took out the internals and built them into a
Nikon (Score:2, Informative)
Nikon [nikonusa.com] has a ton of products for this very purpose and in fact many if not all major vendors carry and sell them. If you want a webcam ready microscope you are going to have to buy one I would bet. But even a quick look [amazon.com] at Amazon will yield interesting results. We have the Nikon setup in the lab and it is a wonderful beast.
Sera
Using a webcam (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, it took him a couple trys (trial and error) to get the focal length and everything lined up properly, but it made some nice pictures.
Good luck
What kind of applications? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd start with what I expect in an image and build a system from there. If you just want to take simple pictures of things close up you might also consider dumping your current microscope and going with this. [fsu.edu]
Re:What kind of applications? (Score:1)
Check this site out... (Score:2)
They also have a nice selection of other interesting projects...