OT: USB microscope

[Bill Wright]

Has anyone any recommendations for particular ones? I'm thinking about getting one for my granddaughter.

Bill

[John Rumm]

Even the entry level eBay jobbies seem quite good for messing about with. I use one for close inspection of surface mount work on PCBs.

Think of them more as very good magnifiers, rather than true microscopes.

[newshound]

I have a couple of the ones which mount on stands, and very good they are for inspecting small components and surfaces. On some awkward specimens I have had better results from the 1.3 Mpix cam than a laboratory static unit with a high quality camera and lens because I couldn't get such good lighting on the lab rig.

For a youngster you probably want one with a microscope-type format like the Bresser already quoted, or there are cheaper ones without the interchangeable lens turret.

Both of mine have an optical adjustment which changes the working distance and the magnification, so you don't necessarily need to change objectives.

You *may* have to fiddle around a little. I use mine on a desktop and three laptops, and they can be fussy about which usb port they are used in. I think they are basically webcams, but they come with software to control the lights. I am just waiting for someone to come up with an Android app to do this, because this would be *wonderful* for some of the site work I do where a laptop is a liability. They work with webcam software on a Linux box, but without the lighting.

[The Other Mike]

Lidl do these for around 50 quid at least once and sometimes twice a year. I know they had them on offer round about this time last year. The USB camera replaces the eyepiece. Made in Germany with lots of metal and not much plastic so quite solid and the optics are ok, the camera less so but still passable. The scope is not up the standards of my pair of Leica's but at less than 1% of the cost I wouldn't expect them to be. (luckily I got them for peanuts)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've got a Lidl one - branded Bresser - and it's almost entirely plastic. Useful enough at the low price - but I'd have preferred a x10 x20 x40 as the magnification rather than x20 x40 x350. The camera at only VGA spec could have been better. But all in all not bad for the things I use it for.

[Steve Thackery]

Could you tell us the make/model? Or a link, maybe?

Thanks.

[Bill Wright]

OK, I've bought one. If it's no good I'll blame you!

Bill

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Much the same as the Lidl one (same make) but with different magnification. Lidl one is x20, x80, x350. Be interested if you think the camera at only VGA spec lets it down slightly. I can't remember the Lidl price exactly - but I think it was about half that. I wonder if they are old stock - chips to do SVGA have been around for ages.

[The Other Mike]

Surprising that the microscopes from Lidl could differ as they appear to have been running the exact same offer for a few years now. The ones I bought from Lidl last December had a die cast metal frame, metal eyepiece tube, metal rack, machined brass turret, and brass objective lens housings. 4x 10x 40x objectives, 5x and 16x eyepiece and a 2x barlow The range is definitely 20 -

1280 as per the Amazon one.

Going from memory and looking at the Amazon photo the only plastic bits were the stage, the black base cover,the knobs and the camera, the latter clearly built down to a very low price.

[newshound]

One of them looks like this

the other looks like this

Note, these are not the actual ones I have (have lost the links as they were on an old mail system).

The thin one does high mag, the practical limit on my fat one is about

50 x on postcard sized images. They all seem to be 1.3 or 2 Mpix.

My "thin" one claimed higher resolution, I think 5 MPix but they were lying; but it worked well enough so I kept it anyway.

There are dozens around which look like the "fat" one, at a range of prices but I suspect they are generally the same inside. I have one of the cheap "rack and pinion" stands for the thin one which is a bit flimsy and the adjustment is not as sensitive as I would like.

They are a bit fiddly to focus, but for the money are great value. The built in lighting is surprisingly good.

[Steve Thackery]

Great - thanks, newshound.

[Scott M]

I would expect it's the limitation of USB bandwidth. At 25fps, VGA is the highest uncompressed res that can be banged up and down it. Higher res and they'd have to compress the image or go to a lower frame rate which would look less good to punters (and possibly a bit of a pain for a microscope.)

USB devices of my aquaintance that claim higher-than-VGA res still use a VGA chip but have s/w that simply scales the image up.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Ah. No eyepiece on mine - it's display on the computer only.

[Gazz]

is that USB 1, 2 or 3? or does it not make a difference

[dennis]

I have one from lidl, it has a 1.3m camera and an LCD screen. It takes an SD card to put the pictures on. It cost £50 IIRC.

[John Rumm]

USB1 was about 11 Mbps in full bandwidth mode. USB2 is significantly faster at a theoretical 480 Mbps (although real throughput is only a tad over half that). 3 is faster still and should be able to shift around 4Gbps

[Matty F]

I'd like a video camera with about 500x magnification, if anyone has any suggestions. It wants to run all day every day, and at least 25 frames per second. (It's for showing Brownian Motion.)

[Scott M]

Should have said USB 2 which is still the de facto standard gizmos are designed for. 1.1 ws short lived and, personally, I've not seen anything with a USB 3 plug on the end. Got a couple of USB 3 ports on the new PC I've built but nothing to use 'em for[1]!

[1] A lie. USB 3 sockets have extra pins but are backwards compatible.

[Bob Eager]

Just got a nice little Fujitsu scanner and it actually has a USB 3 cable.