Review of Raspberry Pi Microscope - Using official HQ camera with Hayear microscope SMD soldering

this is a review of a raspberry pi microscope using the hq high quality camera from raspberry pi and a high year microscope lens and mount which i bought from pimaroni pemeroni seems to be the only supplier i can find that's actually selling these other than going direct to high year which is a chinese company but it looks like they're a company that does professional quality microscopes the microscope and the stand costs about 55 pounds but you also need the raspberry pi high quality camera and a raspberry pi obviously pimmer only do offer international shipping depending upon where you are that may add to the cost i'm going to unbox this microscope for the high resolution camera for the raspberry pi uh if you don't want to watch this then you can skip as with a a lot of my videos i've included chapters and you can look on the timeline and skip forward or look in the description for details of the time to skipped let's get rid of those few bits of packaging so it seems to be reasonably well packaged so this is the so there we go so there's the the lens there there's a cover on the back and that's where the raspberry pi high resolution camera connects to actually sure i've got to got a camera here that's it i don't believe it will need this mount adapter so there's a lens cap there's a mount adapter as well there so leave that should just screw straight onto there and this is quite it's weighty quite a bit of weight it feels quite sturdy i'll just leave that off for now all right unbox the rest of it there's a mount so this this all feels um very sturdy well manufactured now there's a adjustment point a ratchet pinion on there vertical stand and a base so there's no instructions at all in that presumably find out some instructions online but just looks like it's uh it's gonna be straightforward enough to assemble quite a sturdy base so some holes in the base not sure whether they're pre-drilled or anything so that you can put say the raspberry pi in there i'm not sure that would look like two hdmi not quite sure but let's have a look screws on now i think i need to check the instructions find out which way around this goes but it goes that way and it looks like it's adjustable height there as well as the grip on there and then there's a little bit of adjustment in that for the focusing all in all and no instructions with it and feels quite sturdy i just let's say that there's no lens cap but actually there is it's come off inside there so there's there is a lens cap for there as well okay so i'll put that together and see how it works okay so i've checked for instructions and the instructions are quite limited on their website just say there's that the base can be removed using two screws so it looks like yeah there's a couple of screws each side but from where i can gather this is not got it's not designed for a raspberry pi as such and these holes will not actually line up with anything in particular so if you want to put a raspberry pi inside the base then it sounds like you can do so but you need to uh do a bit of a adjustment to create your own holes and things like that so let's have a look at how this mounts so quite a long shaft and then the lens that's in here all feels quite sturdy and then again so it doesn't say whether you need the lens adapter on i don't think so so i'll just take that off and put it straight on then it's a case of connecting up to the raspberry pi and i'm going to go there's a little adjustment there anything's that so it had to come off in the thing it's actually really quite loose the only thing that doesn't feel quite right and the rest of it seems to be quite good build quality and there's holes in the base but don't know what they're for so i think if you want to put something in the base then then you just tack it yourself probably need a longer lead on this so you can get i've certainly got somewhere some a much longer um cable so i don't intend permanently putting a raspberry pi i'll probably have that the raspberry pi alongside it and just connect it as needed i've connected the microscope with that high quality camera two raspberry pi and i've got my next stop too here's the screen as you can see i've got rather a long uh camera cable here uh unfortunately the one that comes with the camera as standard is nowhere nearer long enough to uh to put the raspberry pi any distance from the microscope however the next size i had was i don't know a couple of meters long or something like that really probably about 50 centimeters would give you enough to go to a raspberry pi set next to it it's all connected up literally it's just the one cable from there to there you need to enable that using the raspberry pi configuration tool just enable the camera as you normally would for the camera but no additional software i'm just going to use the raspi still which is the the still photo utility provided for the raspberry pi and we're going to have a look at a few things and see how it works first of all i'll set let's buy still here so i've got the minus k option which is to wait for a key press uh you hit enter to take a snapshot and then x and enter to exit and then just giving it a file name i've just called this image one uh first thing to do remove the lens clap and then it's completely black i'm just gonna put a white sheet of paper here just so we can see it so yeah we can see this there's definitely something from the camera bear in mind i've got a very bright light on my video camera here which is required if i uh i'll turn that off in a bit once i've i've got something we can show you how much light is needed i just thought i'd take a look at these there's a couple of integrated circuits on here as you can see it's i think it's too high up at the moment so i'm to move it so there's a collet here that we can move down and then there's a screw at the back of that so any major adjustments need to be done initially using that and then you have got a little bit of play here you can use for focusing and you've got focus on there so if i turn these the other way around we should be able to read values on here so and there we go so see this is a sn 74 hc zero five nine five and you can't quite get all that in a single image at that level of magnification that shows what we can do so i'll just do another image so you could create a script that could make this a bit easier to do using python what i'm going to do is just drop the brightness on my light here you see that with this off so i've just got the normal house lights on can't see anything at all and then there's my lowest level of my camera light you can just see it and then this this does go quite bright and that's that's much better so if you're not using a camera light presumably you won't normally be using a camera you will need some kind of bright light shining pretty much directly onto the microscope to be able to see anything it might be worth looking at some kind of neopixel ring or something something mounted here that can just shine a light across that so that you can have it as a permanent solution there we go so we can zoom out we've got a reasonable amount of range on there so there we go that's a nicer photo showing most of the integrated circuit there i just thought it'd be interesting just to take a look at something else i've got a arduino here and as you can see this has got lots of surface mount chips this is the the you know wi-fi so it's a a wi-fi on board so it'd be quite interesting to see how well you can see those and particularly the soldering on them so let's put that underneath and have a look at these there's a couple of chips here there we go and that's that's pretty clear i turn it around so there so you can see really well the individual pins and the soldering of those so it depends what you want to use it for i was particularly looking at electronics how we can use that as a post to get in there little magnifier perhaps if you want to do soldering so this is a nice metal bait so i'm gonna have a look at how we could use this perhaps for some smd soldering now the first thing i've done i've turned the camera around so that the cable comes forwards this means that when you look at the object under the microscope then it's it's oriented the correct way up in this case i've got the arduino uno wi-fi here so you can see this is the atmel mega 32 we can just zoom in focus that and as you can see even though this is only a tiny little chip you can see each of the individual pins in really good detail so if you needed to do some soldering if your hands were steady enough but there we go you can see each individual pin this is a pair of tweezers as you can see the tweezers are actually bigger than the the pins on there an older arduino here this is the demilinov which is a 80 mega 328 p you can see it on there look at that it's very faint on here and the contrast isn't huge that mel no i think the contrast is just a little bit low to be able to read that maybe if i had a better light or something but this is this bit further down so we're gonna zoom in a little further run here so there we go still not particularly easy to read and really it's just it's just the lightest so i can read it manually by tilting it so the light reflects against it so perhaps if i move the light closer there there we go yeah so the the light does need to be really close obviously this isn't looking so good i have to get really close in so that i could clearly see now that says a t mega three two eight p there we go yeah and i'll just save that image so you can see what that looked like and so those um devices on the uno wi-fi they're going to be too small for you to hand solder but these are smd devices here potentially you could focus on those and if you needed to pick and place them you can't touch and make sure they're in the right position so just use this shot just to show you actually the optimal brightness so when i was looking at the arduino before you could hardly read the writing on it and if i put a bright light here so this is the light i've actually been using which i've just placed right at the back of the stand shining on it then it is very easy to see the writing on all the components certainly a lot clearer so i will include some of these photos as well so you can see just what sort of quality you should be looking at and here's another shot just showing the same light i've put it at the side this time because the usb connector here was shadow in here so now if i put it here i can see the light on here so i mean really it's you need to be looking at positioning your light very close to the item you're looking at quite nice little camera uh it's fairly sturdy there's a bit weight behind it to keep it sturdy but not hopefully my mighty need a reasonable amount of space for it and uh do remember to get a uh a longer cable if you wanted to use that with a piece on the desktop on that quite happy that's very nice [Music] do [Music] so you

Channel: Penguin Tutor

Views: 14,204

Keywords: raspberry pi, microscope, hq, hi-resolution, camera, official, stand, magnify, magnifying, photo, images, raspistill, arduino, uno, smd, solder, soldering, tweesers, tweezers, model, making, hobby, craft, zoom, tiny, intricate, detail, model railway

Id: _lTzv5IwWNk

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020