DIY Raspberry PI Microscope Camera

[richmit]

I have been a long time reader of this forum, but this is my first post.

I was doing some research recently to replace an inexpensive, HDMI digital microscope I use for postage stamps. I have a very nice stereo microscope with a camera port, so I was thinking I could simply add a camera to it. Anyhow, I came across some newer microscope cameras with built image processing software. Things like the Accu-Scope Excelis and the VIEW4K. Simply connect the camera to your monitor & mouse, and you can do simple image processing and measurement without a computer. This is really interesting for me because I do a lot of length measurements on images from a flat bed scanner and my old digital microscope using Fiji/ImageJ.

These solutions are expensive for what you get, and the analysis software is pretty limited. So I thought, why not build my own? It's just a tiny computer and a camera in a compact case after all. If I used a Raspberry Pi, then I could actually run my favorite image analysis software (Fiji/ImageJ) right on the camera. So that's what I did:

https://richmit.github.io/microscope/le ... rpi-camera

[MichaelG.]

Excellent project … Nicely documented

Thanks for sharing it.

MichaelG.

[dtsh]

I have been using the HQ camera for most of my images, but have used the V2 camera as well, what camera module are you using? I look forward to seeing some of your images.

[MichaelG.]

what camera module are you using?

The ‘Bill Of Materials’ at 7.2 seems fairly explicit

… or is there some subtlety that I have missed ?

MichaelG.

[dtsh]

The ‘Bill Of Materials’ at 7.2 seems fairly explicit

… or is there some subtlety that I have missed ?

MichaelG.

Thanks! Nope it was me that missed something not even subtle.

[richmit]

I have been using the HQ camera for most of my images, but have used the V2 camera as well, what camera module are you using? I look forward to seeing some of your images.

Here are a few of my most common subject (postage stamps). If you look closely, you can see camera module is not level leading to some blurriness left and right. I need to tighten up the adjustment screws, and put a drop of Loctite on them. These are at zoom=1, with a 0.63x aux lens, and a 0.5x camera lens -- the resulting field is around 20mm or so across.

This first one is illuminated from the side so you can better see that the paper has been embossed.

[MicroBob]

Hi Mitch,
very interesting development!
In my eyes the main reason for buying microscope cameras for the microscope company is the software integration. With your solution quick capture and image editing cycles should be possible and the Rapi high quality camera should be fine for most use cases. I have a stak of other projects ahead, otherwise I would immediately give this a try.

Bob

[TallyFeli]

Hi...Utilizing the focal point from a laser pointer is a decent decision. I'm at present utilizing the R-Pi camera as a low-power magnifying lens utilizing a bigger, more costly focal point from Edmund Scientific. In any case, from the video, it resembles the laser pointer focal point would really work better (despite the fact that with a more limited central length = more modest field of view).