TPAI, this is another of your excellent projects. I for one look forward to further videos on this subject.

That model of microscope kit was given to me for my 10th or 11th birthday in the 1990's. Seeing the kit improved with modern technology was a delight. Danke schön.

Very cool! There is a way to determine the ideal length of the eyepiece tube: Look inside one of the normal eyepieces, they usually have a ledge on the inside (you might have to unscrew the top lens from the eyepiece) where one would normally mount reticles. This ledge is positioned in the focal plane of the objective, and it is at the right distance for the camera sensor. That distance will give you the least distortion of your image, but your lighting also needs to be correctly focused for a clear image (see Köhler illumination).

So here's the tricky thing about video files: There's a "container" and within that container there's a video stream and an audio stream (a bit like a zip file with more than one document in it). The mp4, mkv, etc. that you see at the end of the file name actually represents the container and (for our purposes) has no direct bearing on the encoding of the video stream. In fact, the most common encoding of video streams in those containers is h264. That's a long-winded way of saying that the h264 encoding wasn't the issue here, but rather the fact that it was raw video which was not held in a container; VLC and/or Handbrake should be able to fix the issue in addition to ffmpeg.

Amazing work and results! Congratulations!

Looks like you got a better image with your hack than with the commercial camera.

You mad an entire complete video, thanks :) That's a good result!

you have really good english and you've taught me alot . thanks dude.

Excellent video. Very interesting. The stash of old microscopes I've collected are about to get a new life!

I very much enjoy your video series. And a special thanks for the words in German - it adds a nice touch.

Wanna have a good laugh? Wanna see some cringy Germans singing in America: kzread.info/dash/bejne/oHh5yMOontK3pso.html

@AspinceLaframboise

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks eh. That was great... Ü

@Redbuild_

7 жыл бұрын

The Post Apocalyptic Inventor I see that everyday ,not in America but at work in Germany ;)

@Keith_Ward

7 жыл бұрын

Oh we have a lot more cringe-worthy than that!

@RPBCACUEAIIBH

7 жыл бұрын

Use a higher amperage adapter or shorter thicker power cable for your raspberry pi, cause that rainbow square at the top-right corner of your screen is a warning for undervoltage... I have a pi 3B and I've got the same issue until I changed the adapter to a 5V@4A one that, I had...

@RPBCACUEAIIBH

7 жыл бұрын

I don't have a pi camera, but I already have a modified webcam which I turned into a digital microscope made of recycled lenses, couple of plastic caps, lots of epoxy, and I also made an LED ring light around it, controlled by a simple circuit. I used that with GUVC viewer on my PC, under Ubuntu 15.04, to display image/record video/capture image. It works, but it doesn't yet have a stand(I didn't finished it yet), and it's kinda hard to position right, and get a still image, while I'm holding it in my hand. It"s an old webcam I had laying around, and it's only 480p camera... Anyway I'm pretty satisfied with that knowing that I literally only payed the epoxy, and the components for the light ring, and circuit... sot it was less then 5€ for me... I'll definitely try if that works with my raspberry pi too. :)

That is pretty rad. I have thought of doing this. Never got round to it.

you forgot to mention the most important part of them all, ducktape

wow, very cool ! I wish I had your luck with such a cheap microscope. I personally still hunt for a cheap one. About ffmpeg, you mentioned it didnt worked in windows back then. I am using it rather later comparative with you, so from around 2020, and I exclusively use it in my windows7 that I still run in 2022 right now. And as far as I experimented with it, it did everything I wished, from cutting a video, merging 2 pieces, converting formats (for ex: mp4 to avi, to mp3 whatever) and more. So it appears in 2016 when you made this video, ffmpeg might had been in its infancy but now, in 2022 is working absolutely fine in windows. Its fascinating to see you use these tools, very good !

for anyone considering looking at microelectronics at the level of the silicon die, that requires magnification of around 1000x and you need metallurgy microscope where illumination is fed into the optical path through the lens (because lens is so close to the specimen light can't get to it from the side)

Great video :) Fascinating topic - keep it coming please

Great idea to use the RPi. Thank you.

Looking forward to seeing some SMD's soldering rigs using your DIY approach , Cheers from marokko

"And we, who are all that is left of the old engineers and mechanics, are turning our hands to salvage the world. We have the airways, what is left of them, we have the sea. We have ideas in common; the freemasonry of efficiency--the brotherhood of science. We are the natural trustees of civilization when everything else has failed." (Things To Come - H.G. Wells)

@Cyberpuppy63

4 жыл бұрын

They used the same line in Planet of the Apes, too. Early 1970's; Paraphrased, slightly; but same idea.

Increíble! sinceramente muy buen vídeo!! muy bueno el proyecto! saludos.

This was a pretty good project! I think that at this point, the limiting factor is the microscope's own optics; if you have the oportunity, try it on a professional biological microscope like a Olympus with Carl Zeiss lens or maybe a Leica microscopes, you will be blown away by the quality of the images, as besides their optics are much much better, they also have polarizing filters and other kinds of improvements.

Your intro is super charming

use some various different colours of LED to illuminate the stage...you can see different things at different frequencies of light. Nice hack!

Yes, please continue with more lighting options. I am curious to see how this can be used for electronics work. Can the distance from the objectives be easily changed to give more working area? Great video, thank you.

@zombieregime

3 жыл бұрын

Scopes used in electronics videos are usually stereoscopes that use a large single objective lens to get up to 60x, which also allows for a larger depth of field. This type of scope is a biological/mineralogy microscope. The optical train is made for very close, very narrow field imaging. Usually of things squished flat between two pieces of glass. One easy mod to do with these type of scopes for viewing things that aren't biological in nature is to add a light for top illumination but if you were using the high power objective is usually too close to the work for the light to illuminate from above so you have to use bottom illumination. I am currently working with a cheap microscope to make a automated mechanical stage and focusing mechanism so that I can just mount something on a slide but this line into the scope and the scope will automatically take an image at every point across the slide and Stitch them all together for one big image. TLDR - modding cheap Scopes is totally a thing. But not all mods are possible depending on the scope.

nice project! vorallem die vergleiche! grüße aus hessen

I really like that idea!

Awesome video!

Looks like an interesting adventure.

Very nice video! I'd like to use this on a simple telescope for taking pics/vids of the Moon!

Thank you very much for your video, which helped me a lot !! I got my daughter a Bresser Mikroskop Biolux NV 20x-1280x for Christmas (100 Euro), which also comes with a simple usb digital camera included. For me however, I want to use the Raspberry Pi as host PC. Here I found two programs (cheese & Camorama) which was very helpful. Unfortunately the microscope is still wrapped under the Xmas tree, so I could not test this yet. However with a Webcam especially Camorama works pretty good. Cheese is however better, but loads the Pi CPU too much. Will see how this all works after Xmas.

Thank you again for all the german translations.

Hi! I was thinking about this and it came to me, that you are using the microscope like a simple magnifying glass. You have a system of only one lens. It would be interesting to see, if a setup using three lenses again like in the objetive-eyepice-eye system, for example the objective with an eyepiece and then the camera with its lens in the right distances is also possible. Using only one lens, you don't get the multiplication effect of the magnifications. Only a magnifying glas with hopefully good resolution and small focal distance... but it is cool to see that it work as easy as this

would this work for telescopes as well?

This brings back memories of my microscope as a kid. It had brine shrimp eggs in it, so you could grow them and look at them swimming about.

@stonent

7 жыл бұрын

I found some of their eggs that had spilled to the bottom of an old box of toys many years later and sprinkled them into water. Within 2 days there were things swimming around.

I'm doing this with an old usb webcam. Damn you for beating me to the punch!!! I would love to see what improvements you can make to the lighting system and whether the flickering artefacts of the LEDs can be mitigated. The system I'm using is an old London Beck model 47 scope with a logitech 5mp webcam, and also a tungsten filament scope light form the 60s. I have put a bit of thought into moving to LEDs, but my experiments have come up with the same colour distortion you had -_- So seeing some solutions would be really cool. Anyway, thanks for the cool video.

I have a bit of electronics here that I've been unsuccessfully trying to read the number on a chip using magnifying glasses and such. This video prompted me to go and get my "USB Microscope" (one of the cheap ones :-) and it worked quite well for doing that. That thing came with some software that I was never able to make work but my linux distribution came with an application called "cheese" which was apparently made for webcams, and that worked well. I can either store pictures or videos with it. I'm sure that it's available under Ubuntu, haven't looked to see if it's on my Pi yet.

can you upgrade to the 8megapixel 2.1 pi camera? or does it need that adjustable lens?

I'm very interested in this. I have my grandfather microscope and this is a wonderful idea! I can teach my grandchildren how old-school and new-school Technology can coexist to be beneficial and educational.

Very nice video, thank you so much.

I have to do this thanks I though it would not be as good but clearly way better.

You could have also used a old blackberry or similar lcd display backlight panel to fix directly below the slide area and maybe still utilise the brightness levelling of the said led backlight. I always have many sized lcd displays around that can be dismantled for projects if needed or just pop into your local smartphone repair store and ask them if they have any old lcd backlight working screens they may donate to you 👍🏼

Very interesting, thank you

Winff is an option on both Windows and Linux it is a frontend to ffmpeg. On the windows version it comes with the ffmpeg exe files in a subdirectory of the main directory Winff runs from.

I would be very interested in seeing you test this on electronics.

is that possible to display the live image from the camera module without recording it?

can u mod this for surface mount component soldering?

I was just looking at a pi camera but was worried I wouldn't find enough uses for it until I saw this video. BTW your Raspberry Pi power supply is too small, the square rainbow in the right corner is a sign that the system is going into power save and will slow your capture down and loose frames. I just ran into this problem on a Kodi build and a 3A supply fixed everything.

Interesting stuff - I did wonder about the quality of the sample slide, it would have been good to see a specimen of known firshness/quality. One detail - 'Objectif' = lens in standard English. In some special situations, 'objective' might be understood, but it's not the average camera enthusiast says. 'Objective' in normal English usage means 'Ziel', auf Deutsch.

Wow. Great video. That was awesome and very well explained Could you reverse engineer a lm317 in a diy episode

I wonder if - since you are using a camera element rather than human eye - what would happen if your stage (under and from above) illumination might try using infra-red, ultraviolet or polarized light source(s)? I think UV is not recommended for direct viewing, especially as in a microscope. Best luck.

nice job

What objective lens did you use in the microscope? 10x? 40x?

Do I see a Dell latitude D630? I have one of those

What kind of images you have from a pcb? Can the microscope be used for solder work or is the latency of video record+playback too high for that? In solder work I have found that enlargening factors of around 2:1 to 5:1 are good, so a microscope might be wrong tool for that anyway...

This is a great idea, I'd like to see more! However, using Linux on your main PC is generally what I'd advise. In case of enough RAM, keep Wintendo in a virtual box, or if you absolutely need it for some crappy hardware that doesn't run on real computers, make it a small dual boot partition (although when I ran that setup, I always felt like my PC wasn't available when in Windows, because all my programs and all my data were of course on the Linux partition, which made me use Windows maybe once a year or so).

Was the pi cam producing better quality than the Other cam? I have been considering getting a microscope in my shop, but prices too much. This looks like it may be the way to go. I would be satisfied to go only to 60x with top illumination. Need for metallurgy. I deal with h264 all the time on windows 7. Think you have win 7. I run ffmpeg from within a folder on win 7 using cmd window, but only to assemble downloaded from youtube 1920x1080 videos. I assemble the sound file to the video file. It works with h264. I think there used to be, and maybe still is an ffmpeg windows installer. Not sure it would have all the functions of running it from cmd window though.

A substage condenser should cut down some of the glare and try the flat side of the mirror.

You could program your Pi to make a motor move the focus and take many pictures and stack them in Photoshop or other software so to make focus stacking photos!

@alexecheverria

6 жыл бұрын

www.digitaltrends.com/photography/how-to-use-focus-stacking-for-sharper-photos/

H264 isn't rare mate, it's the most common codec used these-days. edit: oh you're talking about the file format, the "video container". Whoops

What happened with the EDM power supply project? I bought an old Deckel CNC Sinker EDM machine that has a blown supply and I was considering building one.

Very nice. Might try it if I can find a cheap microscope somewhere. Got the rest. One question. Why don't you record in a other filetype?

This is awesome, I am going to do this a.s.a.p.

i call u my german friend . respect from over eas

Could you do this with a regular small microscope?

I like this video. I have a request. Can you maybe back engineer a flir camera for infrared detection, then show us how to approximate that affect from repurposed or recycled items please?

You should get yourself an "Auflichtmikroskop", I'm not sure if there is enough space between the objective and object on this one to get the light in from above. The really high end ones even put the light out through the objective lens.

vlc player not work for video? ofc ffmpeg to convert that is what most software use lol. and what if your dust runway after you take picture. it take 5 seconds. there is time setting to how long that preview is open and even take it off

Nice pics, Would be nice to see also some video i.e. moving things...

@PMuis

7 жыл бұрын

sperm? :P

From what I can tell from the ffmpeg output, the issue isn't that your programs can't use h.264, but instead that those '.h264' files you have are raw h264 data with no video container (like mp4). Which is why running it through ffmpeg fixes them; ffmpeg is just copying the input file directly into the output container file. With that said, it also looks like the files were originally encoded using the 'high' profile for h264, so if you ever run into issues with another program not being able to play the mp4 versions, I would suggest adding the '-profile main' flag to your ffmpeg command. As to transcoders on windows, there are builds of ffmpeg for windows ( ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ ), but as I've never gone through the process of installing them and using them on windows I can't comment on how easy it is to get setup. If all else fails, like many others have suggested in the comments, handbrake is a good alternative.

that was very interesting

To reencode videos, I use Handbrake, though if you're having problems with programs and devices not being able to play h.264 video... that's very strange. Typically that's my Go-To format

@thefauvel7558

7 жыл бұрын

James Pourroy Yet another alternative is MeGUI

@thefauvel7558

7 жыл бұрын

James Pourroy If you don't need to reencode, just use a muxing tool to mux the h264 stream into a container of your choice (MP4, MKV, etc). No encoding is done.

wonder if you could hack a slr film camera this way

It's not really an encoding problem, more a container problem. H264 is a video codec, but for a general purpose media usage you need to mix it with sound, subtitles etc. That's why containers like mkv or mp4 exist. ".h264" is a raw video stream, that's why not many programs can read it. "Conversion" to MP4 is not re-encoding, just copying into a media container.

Nice hack

When you're taking the video or a still with the pi camera on the microscope tube, how are able to get a rectangular image to display with raspistill or raspivid, instead of the round image that the eyepiece tube would generate? And it looks like you're getting an almost full screen for the vids and pics as you're taking them. How? And finally, are you using a lens in front of the pi camera? Otherwise, how are you getting those large FOVs? Thanks!

@kal-el8399

3 жыл бұрын

Actually, I figured it all out. I just got myself a new Pi HQ camera, and screwed in onto the camera tube of my microscope (a Swift 380T.) Since the camera itself didn't have a lens built into it, and therefore, was just a sensor, the objective of the microscope acted as the lens. And it all worked! Got a decent FOV, which filled up my display. The videos and stills come out great.

Telescope hack possible this way? I would really like an easy affordable way to send a live image from a Telescope to something like a tablet or phone if possible.

Saw on another channel, that using polarizing film in front of the light source & also below the eye-piece, will improve the picture lots+++. By rotating the film you can find the optimum picture. I have some on order from Aliexpress & should have some spares left over. Let me know if you want me to post you some spare ones. (you canalso get polarising film from PC LCD or phone screens. ....love the English Deutsch translations :)

For video conversion you can use Handbreak handbrake.fr/ it runs on Win, Mac and Linux

@TheMetalButcher

7 жыл бұрын

Graham Hooley handbrake rocks

@thefauvel7558

7 жыл бұрын

Ollyweg 0 Probably the simplest way of doing it is to mux the h264 stream into an MP4 container, for example. No conversion, reencoding, required.

@thefauvel7558

7 жыл бұрын

Ollyweg 0 That's interesting, I thought it could be just a container issue, where the editing software won't accept the standalone h264 stream, since all editing software I know does support h264.

@thefauvel7558

7 жыл бұрын

Ollyweg 0 Yeah, you are right. Didn't think about that. There's a whole range of encoding options that might pose a problem for certain editing softwares, even though it is to my knowledge that a good implementation of the h264 codec should work with all available options within the codec, such as level, trellis, deblocking, etc.

OBS studio can remix video formats to MP4

you can also do it with a cheap HD webcam, just carefully remove its lens and stick to it

What is the name of the model of microscope

The audio has been clipping in several of the most recent videos. Has anyone else noticed this issue?

@JernD

7 жыл бұрын

(By the way, I think this is a great video. I am thinking of doing the same thing.)

@energylab227

7 жыл бұрын

John Degenstein Yep, same for me. He needs to lower his recording levels, or use a different mic.

@chasebarnard1223

6 жыл бұрын

is it like a static popping? I hear it but it is not detrimental .

Somehow the audio is a bit on the high gain side (it has been so on the previous video as well). Or to put it directly, it's overdriven. If you are able to turn down the microphone gain for 30 or 40 per cent, it would probably be fine and still be audible. Or maybe it's because I'm listening to this video on headphones, and it is normal for your vids? But other videos or voices don't sound like that in my headphones, so it must be something with this video. I love the quality and all, but this audio issue makes it kind of hard to watch (but I still fight through it because I like watching it).

have you ever changed out a micro usb connector on a pcb?

@Keith_Ward

7 жыл бұрын

As easy as any other type of component, just depends on your experience. Heh, and you might need a microscope to do it ;-)

Great hacking! I'm interested in trying a Raspberry Pi with a camera module to take pictures of (digitize) super8 cine film frames. So the subject matter would be pretty small (about 5x4mm). I'm thinking I might be able to buy one of the higher res. Arducam cameras, then maybe their microscope lens (about £50 GBP) or some ordinary CS or C mount lens with some macro rings on it. This seems a much cheaper option than all the machine vision cameras out there I've been researching, but who knows if it will be any good. Anyway I've just ordered my first Pi board, I think there'll be much trial and error ahead ...

@Technicotop

5 жыл бұрын

Note : using picamera with another lens than the furnished one will probably cause color issues :/ See photo.stackexchange.com/questions/98980/what-is-causing-color-shifts-near-the-borders-of-my-picam-setup for samples Note 2 : PiCamera V1 have less of this color problem (as shown in the video)

Using ffmpeg is horribly uncomfortable. I recommend using VLC for that!

@l3p3

7 жыл бұрын

For converting videos, I always just use VLC! VLC is so underrated!

I need to repair a CF card slot on an Canon EOS

The coloured square in the upper right corner indicates that your power source is too weak.

you should add heatsinks to your raspberry pi

the bars caused by LED lighting is super annoying. I hate it so much that I went back to an incandescent desk lamp for doing electronics work under the scope.

I can see clearly now...

@birger386

7 жыл бұрын

hole - 1st drill press channel Lol

@Sithhy

7 жыл бұрын

I clearly got what you ment...

@TheKrogon

7 жыл бұрын

.... the rain is gone

You can get FFMPEG on windows. It's a manual installation normally but you can use software like chocolatey to make it easier. chocolatey.org/ chocolatey.org/packages/ffmpeg

@BehindTheRides

7 жыл бұрын

Laith Khalil didn't know chocolatey - thanks!

you're not converting the h264 file you're just muxing it into an mp4 container mp4box is another piece of software which can be used to do the same thing and also if you wanted mkv you can use mkvmerge to mux it

You can use MeGUI

@thefauvel7558

7 жыл бұрын

Alternatively, you could use a muxing tool to mux the h264 stream into a container with format of your choice without needing to reencode. FFMPEG has this functionality, maybe you are already using it.

Your Raspberry Pi is underpowered, that rainbow square in the upper-right corner means that the power supply struggles and the voltage has dropped below 4.65 volts.

I'm working with Linux these days.

To get a video "directly try this note to put all "-" correctly or you get problems to mke it work : raspivid -n -pf high -rot 180 -b 17000000 -fps 30 -t 60000 -o - avconv -framerate 30 -i - -y vcodec copy -v 0 -r 30 video.mp4

I’d get my 3D printer out and mod the hell outta that microscope lol

Wow, five euros in us dollars is $5.29. That microscope was a steal! Was it brand new from a shop?,

@dave1135

7 жыл бұрын

I'm meaning new/old stock.

Nice video. Personally, I would rather see it hooked up to a telescope.