Really helpful video! Thanks. I got a new microscope just like this one, but it arrived broken (intermittent wire contact issue). Your video helped me repair the microscope without smashing everything!
The instructions shown in the video does indeed also applies to the newer model of the same style, just start as in the video by removing the LED array (circle) then again, gently, start twist and move the middle bit apart as it seem to have been glued into place. Best I can say, try to "listen" for the plastic when you work the piece, sort of listen for the small "tings" it does when you pry it apart as to not accidentally cause a big snap instead (which would be the plastic cracking...) Edit; Additionally: make SURE it WORKS when reassembled before gluing up the upper section that are connected by a plastic wire, as a mistake I almost made, just before I was about to glue it back up I thought "maybe I should check it work first?", and sure enough, I connected it with USB to my computer and while the light turned on, there was no image coming from the device, I removed the plastic wire and re-attached it again at both connections and tested again with success, be careful with the plastic wire connector and look at the connectors to make sure it is correctly in place and not turned the wrong way. (the connector on each component is single row, so you can make the mistake of placing the connector plates where there is no connection)
The ones I got recently the top will pry off and is being held with two tabs on legs that go down and fit into indentations. Seems to be the only thing holding the top from the bottom on (separated with a chrome colored ring). THEN the whole assembly, lens, led board and all, completely slips out the top, only being held in the bottom barrel by friction. There is no way for that whole assembly to come out the bottom as the bottom is one piece. There are two screws going through the top board that screw into the top ends of those copper / brass? standoffs that also supply power to the led board. Once you take the two screws out of the upper electronics that board is completely separated from the lens assembly. No need to unsolder the led board unless you want to eliminate it, though I'm not sure what would support the lens assembly then.What could be done though easy enough is to hook to the led supply and provide a graduated light level signal if your little camera uses steps (also gets the led adjustment switch off the camera body, making it less fidgety if you use the built on leds at all) or to just disable them. I am well pleased with these little particular camera's build and they are one of the cheapest to be had. They claim like a 1600x magnification and come with software and calibration card. Software is pretty slick and has some really interesting settings in it and even windows camera, etc. Have enjoyed hacking on it so far to see how far it will go. Looks like the lens can be hacked which is ultimately what I'm after.
fantastic just what i needed was going buy a new oneplease do some more perfect speach you are so clever i was going to saw back off slowly glad i didnt good luck to you thanks and same to john xxxx
Thank you. the video is very helpful, i have a microscope with a dirty lens. I intend to clean it but still hesitate to disassemble it. After watching your video, now I dare to disassemble.
Be careful ! First you have to check other videos like : 2MP USB Digital Microscope {follow up distance adjustment} ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jx0tef442bE.html or Usb Microscope Modification. Increase Working Distance. Focusing Distance Hack. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s47dHaJjLuc.html Good luck :)
hello, good video, well explained, a query, is there any possibility of increasing the resolution range just by changing the lens inside the microscope, if so, do you have a reference link or similar projects to increase your zoom, thanks now
Thanks! I think it is possible but in practice it is difficult to achieve (in my opinion, I can be wrong). I think it is easier to experiment with changing lenses in the case of a webcam ( as I have shown in the following video you can use a webcam as a microscope with no modification at all : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rqF3tziGGgY.html ). I don't have a video in mind that can help you with increasing the resolution of your microscope , sorry :\
Ah, there's a screwable focus lens. That's the difference between the 20x 500x 1200x 1600x models. They just screw it a little more :D So get yourself the cheapest version of these, open it and twist the little lens (on the sensor) to get better focus :)
Twist the little lens on the sensor? That little square lens on the circuit board? I'm having issues mine only focus on 1600x and won't focus at all either way
There really is no difference between the models other than lying about the magnification power, which is precisely what they do. Sure they'll say "well we define ours using apparent magnification" so if you display your image on a 100 foot movie screen you magically get 100000x magnification! (hint: you don't) the lens does one thing, allows you to focus the image onto the sensor, and ultimately the level of detail you're limited to will be determined by the sensor which for these may be between 1.3 and 2 MP. Get one of these if you want to make small things bigger so it's easier for you to see and simply use a larger screen to "magnify more"
@@Mike__B actually, you can get a lot of detail with a 2mp sensor. The LoD is irrelevant in a microscope, what does matter is the magnification. Which depends entirely on the lens. Which get dramatically expensive the more you want to zooooooooooom.
My roller stopped turning. I think bc a piece of sand got on the back side of it. But I don’t want to take it completely apart bc I don’t have the glue to put it back together. Is there a way to fix this?
Sim, os dois pontos indicam os pontos onde os dois trilhos metálicos estão soldados Yes, The two points indicate the points where the two metallic rails are soldered
I have this microscope. The first time that I plugged the usb to my pc the led lights worked. After that the led's are not working anymore at any usb port and I even tried to 2 other pc's. No led lights anymore.
If the microscope works and the problem is only the lights, I think the problem is in the potentiometer located along the USB cable. This potentiometer serves to modify the light intensity. The circuitry inside the microscope is well protected.
I had a question if anyone can answer it for me. The microscope is given a magnification of 50x to 500x, of which im assuming most of it comes from the image sensor itself rather than the lenses. Can one possibly retrofit the image sensor such that the magnification is restricted to 8x to 50x rather?
@@visualchallenge2413 my specifications for a particular experiment requires be to have a magnification of no higher than 50x and a minimum of 5x. As far as i caan see, i cannot find a commercial variant of the same.
@@sandeepjimmychoolackal2033 You don't have to modify the material, you can do this by software : get the magnified image and scale it down to the desired magnification. There is software available to process the video stream or the captured image from the microscope.
@@sandeepjimmychoolackal2033 Yes ! an excellent free software : Processing , accessible at processing.org and if you want to see its capabilities relative to video you can consult this 20 minutes tutorial : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WH31daSj4nc.html Processing is easy to learn and very useful !
hiya have you tried opening the usb plug by any chance iv come across a problem my one has two broken wires at the usb plug i opened up the plug and the red is on the 1st pin then white on 2nd and green on 3rd pin and black on 4th pin but theres two broken wires a blue and a yellow and im not sure where ther from it looks like one or maybe two of them were soldered to the red on the first pin would you be able to give me any help or advice if possible
It uses only the four standard wires red black green and white. As you can see in 04:30 even inside the microscope only these four are used, the other wires are not connected.
@@visualchallenge2413 thanks very much for your replay my friend yes i have cut the wire 2 inches from the usb plug to extend the cable and just as i finished soldering it together the blue wire pulled out from the usb plug so i cut the black cover open on the usb plug to resolder it back on and noticed theres a yellow and the blue on not connected and the black had broken of aswell but i soldered the black back in place but im not sure about the yellow and blue ones when i seen the wires in the inside that you show in your video i thought i better ask first before i go any further i was worried incase i broken it trying to open the camera to see if the yellow and blue are connected my friend i noticed every ones had problems opening the back of the camera the led lights are working and the blue and yellow is connected to the led switch for turning the light up & down when i touched the blue to the red wire the lites working but im not sure about this yellow one what it should be connected to the leds are working but its a plain white screen my friend
@@wdavie27 Ah now I understand better. I think the schematic is as on the drawing I made : bit.ly/2Hay7VD Is it correct ? ( Feel free to contact me via email if you want to send me some files visualchallenge@gmail.com )
great video! I have a sinilar micrscope but I have not been able to view the display on the computer. I have tried different OSs still the same result. It just shows blank screen (dark nothing shows change of light). The LEDs turn on but no image. Under device manager my computer recognizes the device. What could have gone wrong?
From the point of view of electronics this type of microscope is -- equivalent -- to a simple webcam. The same troubleshooting applies. what happened to your microscope before ? some accident ?
@@visualchallenge2413 So I purchased it few days ago and I lend to my friend who I helped set it up on his PC. It was working when i set it up. After few days when he returned it, it was just showing the blank even though device manager shows the USB and no yellow triangle (warning). The built in camera app for windows 10 recognizes the camera but shows blank screen when that USB is selected. I have tried linux and same result. The suggested apps are cheese and guvcview. Guvciview worked perfectly before but when plugged in , the window screen for the app freezes so I have to close it. My friend tells me that he unplugged the microscope from the computer (windows 7) to an older computer (IMAC G4) and it didnt work on it but then he plugged back into windows 7 computer it was not working. windows 7 has its different app for viewing the usb microscope. That same app picks up other usb webcams but not this micrscope. my gut feeling is that its possible that by plugging the microscope into G4, it blew something on circuit that powers the sensor. G4 used USB 1.1 which ran on 5 volts and this usb should be able to take that. Also, connecting my multimeter to the two connectors that power the LEDS give me a reading of 2.8 VOLTS; however it states it should be 5V.
@@vitaly3979 I agree with your diagnostic. I also searched "webcam black screen" there is a lot of information but I can't find some situation corresponding to yours. Try to verify closely the microscope's USB connector with your smartphone camera, perhaps you will see some damage (that is my gut feeling). Other than that I don't see a solution sorry.
@@visualchallenge2413 The USB connector looks fine. In addition to that LEDs work so there is no physical damage on it. Only concern is I am not sure what was the voltage before it stopped working. Even though on the leds it says 5v but max i get is 2.8V. I seriously think the sensor is not getting enough power.
@@vitaly3979 Across a white LED the 2.8 V is normal ( try to search on google : "led 2.8v" you will see that there is standard 2.8 V White LED ) . On my microscope (which is not working !) the LED ring contains also a 100 Ohm resistor (which is in series with the LEDs) I think 5 V is the voltage across Resistor+LED.
Until now I didn't try it, but it would be feasible. What I worry about is the alignment of the sensor : it has to be at ***exactly*** 90° relative to the Len's axis. What kind of sensor do you have at your disposal ? ( by the way, I made a video about the use of a kind of webcams as microscopes without any addition at all ! you may want to check it out : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rqF3tziGGgY.html&t )
@@visualchallenge2413 I bought very cheap USB microscope from thrift store hoping it would be sufficient. It appears that it had only support for WinXP32-bit ... and no WIn10 support... also bad image quality. I thought I could replace the camera module with some high quality one with support for Win10 and use only the lens and the fixture from the thing I bought
@@mikegaming4924 Ok I will try to use a webcam sensor on my broken USB microscope just to test the feasibility. It will take some time and I will keep you informed.
@@visualchallenge2413 that will be interesting! Luckily I got my device working in Windows 7 32 bit with the XP drivers and image quality is sufficient at 720p. I got this idea because I noticed they used exactly the same frame in the new version of this usb microscope, but with newer sensor and controller
You can modify a webcam and use it as a microscope. There is a video that may interest you : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RyQmVHcAMsI.html
Yes, but in the webcam the lens must be near the object. With the USB microscope it doesn't happen. I know how to trace the rays in the lens, but i don't imagine what kind of lens set is assembled in the USB microscope.
