How I Greatly Improved My Cheap Microscope

[@nathanheidt1047]

I am so impressed. Not just with your technical ability, but with your scientific communication. You've taken a reasonably complex project and made it seem straightforward and accessible. Looking forward to more!

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Thanks

[@crackedemerald4930]

The jank makes it feel very approachable in my opinion

[@majci261]

​@@BirdbrainEngineer hello i have the same microscope you have but i have a problem, that i lost the disk with drivers for the camera, any suggestions on how to get them?

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

@@majci261 You really are not missing out on anything... the camera it comes with is just horrendous, trust me... you'll not want to use it. I use Fedora Linux on my PC and it just already had the necessary drivers, so simply hooking, for example, VLC up to the usb device stream showed me the image.

[@chikaBurton]

Excellent job! Since there's already a Raspberry Pi in the loop, you can relatively easily add some more functionality by using (almost) real-time image processing with OpenCV to fix contrast and lens distortion issues or add measuring overlays, or even automatic feature detection and measuring.

[@blacklistnr1]

I love this! It's everything that I want a YT video to be: creative, has engineering, failures, simple first-person experience, sparkly colors and a github link! btw, you managed to get that camera as close to the action as I want to watch in irl, but usually have step back to not get in the way :)))

[@pedrohenriclima]

this is really amazing, thank you for producing this for us! the beamsplitter idea is really useful! Looking forward for more :)

[@fdavpach]

What an awesome video, at first when you pulled out the CD drives I was like "oh no, it's going to use those tiny steppers for the mechanism" and the you use them for the X/Y adjust and I wast like "Wait a minute, that's actually a pretty good application for those little steppers, it only has to move the slide, what a genius" and then you used the big stepper for the Z, that is a nice use of the correct steppers for each thing, keep up the amazing videos.

[@Junon15]

This is super jank, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment I can bestow! I worked in a research lab one summer and we did some confocal light microscopy and it is appalling how much companies charge for what is often sub-consumer grade equipment. We had a cheap microscope from China and I always wanted to mechanize it like this, though I didn't have the skill to do it at the time. Well done! I got to see one of my dreams come true through your work. 😊

[@pickleboysupreme]

I get so happy whenever KZbin shows me smaller channels like this. I love seeing what skilled people can make with just things they have lying around. Great video, can't wait to see more from you!

[@eddietowers5595]

First time viewer. First time poster. I just ran into this video and was transfixed from beginning to end. I’m going to binge watch your channel because you have good content. As far as this project goes, don’t sell yourself short, this was a really cool build, specially given the title, you really did improve a cheap microscope, to impress them, if I may say…awesome job.

[@onix331]

The lengths you went with this one, very nice

[@ryanellis4383]

Awesome production quality! And the thoroughness and skill in engineering and science is just great. I hope this channel grows.

[@TD-er]

I'm impressed you could get rid of that much chromatic abberation by adding your simple DIY beam splitter and thus light it from the same direction as the camera. My first idea when I saw your abberation shots was that it had to be coming from the glass piece you put in front of the sensor as this isn't flat on the sensor and thus allows for some light bouncing between sensor and glass (as it is probably also not perfectly parallel to it also) I will also try to experiment with my microscope a bit more to add this as a light source option as I'm now struggling with ringlight and polarizing filters to get some decent shots. (my magnification is nowhere near what you're using as I use it for PCB assembly and repairs and debugging my prototypes)

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Indeed, I too think the protective glass might make the chromatic aberration worse, but luckily the epi-illumination seemed to greatly improve the matter. Unfortunately the epi-illumination makes the contrast a bit bad and I think that might be due to having no corrective optics for the light and because I have to pump so much light into the glass "beamsplitter" that despite the matte black pained beamdump area, some of the transmitted light does end up reflecting back up at the camera directly.

[@TD-er]

@@BirdbrainEngineer Also quite likely there is no anti-reflective coating on the "view side" of the lenses. Maybe you can add some polarizing filters where you feed in the light and/or some aperture insert. However this does probably require you to increase the amount of light you need to feed in even more. Maybe you can also play around a bit more with the pixel integration time so you don't need as much light.

[@_Frogs]

love the video it is really easy to watch and you explain everything so well taking on a complex task explaining it to everyone in detail but still making it easy to watch. loved it

[@mithrildragon9895]

Amazing video! You did an amazing job with your explanation and with your technical skills. The amount of effort you put into this project is amazing! A lot more then what I would put in lol

[@anadventfollower1181]

What a fun watch! Absolutely gifted.

[@faigelable]

You are an inspiration and I LOVE the addition of Sim’s music 🥰

[@brianrichmond3777]

I really like the stepper motor controlled bidirectional stage. You could do the same with stepper motor and a higher pixel camera for focusing so the stepper motor is controlled by software that determines when an object is first in focus, takes a photo, then incrementally focus further down in increments and taking a photo at each focus increment until the object is just out of focus then stack the individually focused photos.

[@HavenInTheWood]

This video is tremendously appreciated! This is just the guidance I was looking for!

[@jebarijihed]

Hi , the music , project and everything are gooooood! W

[@ScottAllie-b7t]

This video has greatly enhanced my understanding!

[@billybertsch1055]

Yooo choom, this is some preem tech you got here. This gadget looks cyberpunk AF, awesome stuff!

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Hey thanks choombah! It sure did recieve a heap of chrome :D As said in another comment, I nearly did call this a cyberpunk microscope in the title haha

[@herrcrazi7495]

Pretty nova indeed

[@anton2re]

Very cool! I love the look of the whole contraption. Keep it up!

[@alexandrevaliquette3883]

1:38 Dam I love this video! I've got the same reflexion.. Should I buy objectives and design my own with my 3D printer and maybe pimp it with arduino laying around??? Then, one year later, I still have the 4 unused objectives and eye piece and a lot of random arduino parts, but missing a scope! And this week, I've found a new/open box discount on a SWIFT 380B for 203$ canadian, shipping next day included! So, short story, it's better to buy a great scope in discount. I will print dark field filter and phone holder to get great image and save my eyes. Maybe one day I'll DIY epifluorescence on it? SWIFT 380B regular price 299$ canadian. Sold by SWIFT on Amazon (218$ US = 204 Euro) It was just above my budget for this project. But I couldn't resist at 203$ cdn (148$ US = 138 Euro)

[@ヒロノツイル]

wow, I.. didn't think I'd enjoy this video so much, however indeed it was really enjoyable. thank you for sharing it with us👍

[@oliverer3]

Yay more fascinating birb projects!

[@OpsAeterna]

legendary build 10/10. using old dvd drives was not what i expected lol.

[@hugeeguh6593]

It might look stupid, but if it works, it works. Keep up the good work

[@baongocnguyenhong5674]

you have a magnificent taste in music

[@alexandrevaliquette3883]

I've got the same idea, but never really started the project... One thing I would have done, is pour concrete in a 3D printed hollow shelve. It would make the scope very solid, limit the vibration and look high quality.

[@alexandrevaliquette3883]

I'm sorry, me again! I'm already at the end of the video... You are so creative and clever! Thank you for sharing your experience, personal taught, your mistakes and how to improve from them. Great source of inspiration! Love from Montréal

[@michael80126]

At the beginning you're talkin about if it's necessary to build such a thing, and i can tell you it's definitely not! But... i totally understand why you made it, tinkering with electronics, optics and a 3D Printer is so much fun to do! Great Video, great Project!

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

I mean yeah, getting a proper trinocular microscope for 300€ would have sufficed for everything... but this was a fun project and technically I spent only like 10€ on the new stepper drivers but the rest of the stuff I got for free from tearing down stuff :P

[@amogusenjoyer]

Is there any way to switch the objectives/lenses from the microscope? I know the cheaper microscopes have them hard mounted but your set up is awesome, i think the only bottleneck truly are the bad optics. That and maybe more light would help a lot

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

The objectives can be replaced, however the thread is weird... I have not been able to find fitting objectives anywhere. I did buy a cheap 60x achromatic from China just to see what would happen, and 3d printed a thread adapter... And it worked, but it's fairly unwieldy and the contrast issues got pretty bad in most cases. I did manage to resolve down to about 230nm or so with the 60x though.

[@oni2ink]

That's a cool mod and a cool project. You should take a look to the PUMA project. It's a very good 3d printed microscope, with an optional epi illumination system. You can probably get some ideas here, and learn a lot about optics. 230nm is not "ok" for an optical microscope lol, in theory it's very near the maximum resolution you can achieve with visible light. With visible light a good oil objective (100x/1.25 oil) can resolve up to 244nm (0.61⋅500 / 1.25). Some very expensive oil objectives with high NA can go up to around 200nm. A 60x dry objective is typically 0.85 NA so you should not resolve more than 360nm with it. Except if you are using near UV light, you can achieve 230nm resolution with a 315nm wavelength. If your 60x objective is cheap and not made for light reflected microscopy you will lose a lot of contrast anyway, because it lacks anti-reflective coatings. And if you don't use a coverslip (probably required, if you see 160/0.17 on the objective) you will lose some sharpness. You can try to buy a half mirror to replace your piece of glass. With the mirror face correctly oriented you should gain contrast (it will also remove some ghosting artifacts caused by the two sides of the glass). I'm using one from aliexpress and you can find it with "Optical Glass Telephoto Beam Splitter" or "Beam Splitter 50T/50R" for around 5€. Also, I'm not sure if the thick glass on top of the sensor is optimal. I would have used a much thinner glass.

[@brianlambert6765]

Great project. I watched your spin coater design as well, another very cool piece of lab equipment. Im not sure what your final aim is with these pieces of equipment, however if you are trying to get nice films from spin coating your need to clean your substrate in a non contact method, normally an ultrasonic bath followed by a surface treatment, such as UV ozone cleaner. Anisole and xylene are good solvents, but have you tried water? If you want to test out surface treatments and coatings just use thinned PVA glue initially. You should give KiCAD a good great open source PCB design software

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Next video will be about dealing with the cleanliness side of things :> The end goal is as was said- microfluidic devices for now, and experience for future in order to hopefully make integrated circuits, lcd-s, oled-s and other such technology that relies on such miniaturized processes.

[@CEric-xd2rt]

it's a great job! great DIY project and great educational video! thanks :)

[@KeritechElectronics]

Nicely hacked! Looking at those IC structures... Micah Scott and Jeri Ellsworth would be proud.

[@celestinemachuca2339]

love it ^^ would love to try also to do the optical stage diy because then the whole thing could be 3d printed. i have some microscope objective conected to a bare ccd webcam camera. it kinda works just like yours. i would like to focus stacking for 3d nano scans since this is cnc controlled.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Maybe it would work out -in that case it would be possible to shape the epi-illumination light a bit better too as the light-path can be longer than 2cm between the lightsource and beamsplitter haha. The problem I can imagine happening is that the alignment would be difficult to get perfect with 3d printing. Cool idea though, maybe one fay I'll try it out!

[@celestinemachuca2339]

@@BirdbrainEngineer maybe with resin parts. So far for another project I been using resin parts and being able to print usable gears at 0.5 mm pitch is mindblowing and fairly mechanical accurate. I will look up if I can think of something.

[@naomiwolf8944]

Your capabilities are truly insane, i hope someday i will be able to work on such amazing projects... that is however if i can even manage to become a functional adult i guess. (I turned 18 months ago but don't feel i will ever be ready) I struggle so much but videos like this inspire me enough to stick around at least, i am thankful for that.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Ah, 18 is maybe the best time to pick up a technical hobby like this. Your mind and knowledge are at the point where you can actually make sense of a lot of the information, while also still having a plastic enough brain to come up with ingenious ways of finding a way to do something that you want. To get into a maker hobby like this, then honestly, you just have to start making *something*. I know if one doesn't have many tools, like a 3d printer available to them it can be a bit hard. But it's also possible to make working, functioning devices from literal scavenged scrap and junk! Might I recommend a project of making a Stirling Engine out of essentially trash! There are a few videos on KZbin that would give you good pointers and ideas on how to make it ;D... That project would give you a strong understanding for how engineered machines are built up and work.

[@heeeyno]

buddy i turned 35 months ago and i still ain't ready. built myself a whole electronics lab and can't finish one project 😓

[@havingabrainisoverrated6214]

Wow, this is amazing.

[@Pat-Newman]

Did you test if the protective glass in the camera compartment might affect image quality? You might get a nicer final image if it's removed. There is the chance light might be bouncing around inside the glass and affecting the contrast or sharpness. It might be totally fine I don't know. It's just pure speculation from someone with a very very casual interest in camera lens design. It's a nice project you did a good job with everything.

[@Pat-Newman]

I think it might be giving you a little chromatic aberration. Camera lenses need to be accurate to wavelengths of light. I am just speculating here. You probably know more than me with everything here lol. You could try painting the edges of the glass with that acrylic paint too. It might help with light bouncing around within the element.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Could be, though from the very limited and quick testing (to prevent dust on the sensor) I did, it did not seem to impact the quality at all to be honest.

[@ArchonLicht]

Amazing project

[@deltacx1059]

11:17 could be field curvature, lens based telescopes have the same issue and require a field flattener to fix. You also seem to have a lot of chromatic aberration which is q problem with the objectives. (Although your light source isn't helping as you find out)

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Yep, the objectives are not great but they will do for now!

[@PeetHobby]

Great results and I love your editing! 👍

[@zombieregime]

I have a cheap AM scope that is even worse than that one, at least yours has a iris, mine is just a disk with holes in it.....yeah...and its off center.....yeah.... Anyhoozle, Ive been able to correct a fair amount of the chromatic aberration by better aligning the stage to the optics. Basically wiggle it around, not just in translation XY but roll and pitch too (idk, add some screws somewhere as jack screws for modifying the plane of the stage to the optical path). There is a lso the stop spring detent thingy under the nose on the turret, you can loosen that and see if there is a more advantageous stop angle. You could try reseating the turret (take the head off, remember how the 3 screws are set so you can recenter it (another potential source of aberration btw), then remove the penta mirror holder (another source of potential misalignment, I had to use a pipe wrench to get mine loose), THEN work on breaking the nut loose that affixes the turret to the nose (oddly enough, its usually in there solidly enough that....well everything aligns to it pretty much...), but thats on you if you want to take on effectively an entire garage realignment(OH! By the by....you can open up the rotating section of the turret too via the screw and spanner nut in-between the objectives (the screw holds the rotating objective mount on, and the spanner nut sets the turning tension (IIRC), ie how much resistance there is to turning it once you overcome the detent) BE CAREFUL!!! There is a handful of tiny little ball bearings in that thing....so be prepared to wrangle them if you go in there)....it can be kinda frustrating....but they dont really put too much effort into setting up these cheap-o scopes from the factory. When I got mine I had to take the lenses apart because there was mold in them.....yeah.... Work slowly and incrementally, and you should hit on an orientation that counteracts the aberration you see down the tube. I guarantee you're aberration problems are more to do with alignment than your lighting set up. Either way, fiddle with it, thats what the hacker/maker hobby is all about ;)

[@Asiafrica]

You guys are awesome.

[@vishalkumar040393]

Great! This exactly what I was trying to do.

[@lesto12321]

this is amazing work, way to go! Only thing i would do differently is to control all directly from the raspi rather than the external MCU, so you could add a fully remote operated microscope. Why would you need that? dunno. but that's not the point, the point is you can :P

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Of course I considered that but I did not want to spend an extra week figuring out how to write that kind of code, so this time I used the Arduino... which also means that technically the microscope is usable without turning on the RPi (eg. when I want to just use the normal eyepiece... though I probably never will, the camera is so much more convenient haha)

[@MrMotey]

Definition of "Cyberpunk Microscope": this Video. Awesome project. Great skills. Loved the Video. Extra love for the recycled consumer products. I always shy away from this because I fear running down a reverse engineering side rabbit hole, when recycling non specced parts. but its badass cool: "Oh, you mean this Microscope? It used to be an old CDRom drive and a broken IKEA light bulb. I fixed that."

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Haha, one of the potential titles for this video was "Old Microscope Turned Cyberpunk" 😆

[@swittman9123]

This would be a great place to use a Pi Zero given your low compute needs, but I imagine the full size pi is what you already had lying around.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Yes, the Raspberry Pi 3 is what I had laying about and unused. As for using the Zero... I'm not convinced it could handle the stream at such a high fps (maybe the Zero 2 could), plus the stream over wlan is going to be a concerning proposition compared to just lan. I did try to stream over wi-fi in this case too, but it did have some problems... but that could simply be because my router is kind of far from the microscope and the signal quality isn't really the best it could be.

[@kjvanwartberg8439]

work of art!

[@das250250]

Big conversion. Almost a rebuild from scratch

[@kayezero703]

Very impressive ❤

[@aeleequis]

Cool Nails, awesome video

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Thanks!

[@nikscha]

Very impressive! I like your nails!

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Thanks! 😊

[@diegogutierrezraghunath9315]

Where did you how to do all of this

[@kindaovermyhead]

Awesome project! Love it!

[@TheOpticalFreak]

Great work 👍😉

[@ignis02]

this is so good incredible youtube video

[@saamvoice9579]

It was an interesting work, some important things to improve the project Using Arduino Uno and Shield CNC version 3, you can get rid of drive wiring. The quality of your image is due to the plasticity of the microscope lenses Distance the glass from the front of the camera lens so that the effects of dirt are not displayed on the image You can use telescope eyepieces to replace the lenses good luck

[@alejandronan607]

Subscribed!! 🎉🎉🎉 amazing video!!!

[@AstridDaFox]

Those finger gloves totally slay! ❤ btw if you don't mind, where did you get em? I really want them.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Haha thanks

[@AstridDaFox]

@BirdbrainEngineer lol I totally get that I've bought so many things that just break after 2 weeks but hey, gotta be stylish

[@spencersharkey]

this is so cool. congrats!

[@newtitojff]

Nice project, can the fps of the camera be higher with lower resolution?

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Yes. At 1080p you can easily get 30fps, 60 might be difficult but iirc the Raspberry Pi cam 3 is able to do it technically. You will certainly need heat sinks on your Raspberry Pi though, as the streaming is quite demanding, even with the heat sinks shown in the video, the Pi gets up to like 60-65C.

[@aronseptianto8142]

what i've seen someone else do for the lighting setup is a ring light and a polarizer filter over the objective lens, though i think that might be a bit of a hassle to replicate on your setup. the result if you can make it working is amazing though for electronic work

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Was the ring of lights on the outside too?

[@aronseptianto8142]

@@BirdbrainEngineer yeah, it's not exactly attached to the objective lens

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

@@aronseptianto8142 I'd imagine then what you are talking about is likely a stereo-microscope, which usually doesn't magnify past 40x or so. That is fine for working on PCB-s, but with my liquid lens project I was having trouble with dust particles only some micrometers in size, so to see those, you can't use that kind of microscope. The polarizer in their case gets rid of glare - photographers and videographers also use polarizing filters for exactly that purpose.

[@GT40Nut]

Great video thanks.

[@KN100]

Incredible project :D

[@tiagotiagot]

Would the lenses of the optical drives be of any use?

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Probably not. The lenses in the optical drives are small (even the half mirrors in it are too small - I initially wanted to use a half mirror from there).

[@gedr7664]

what is the wrench at 7:07 please?

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Oh, hahah, that's actually the laser cut multi-size wrench that came with my 3d printer! It was fairly nice to use for m3 nuts so I have kept it a part of my toolbox!

[@thelordofspyro]

Hahaha the pvz music feels really nostalgic

[@Sir-Dexter]

nice work

[@blitzar8443]

This is hella cool

[@h3dzer]

From microscope to a cyberpunk-looking microcosm world viewer.

[@InfiniteBubbles]

just a small thing it is physically kinda impossible to go much under 500nm with light microscopes because your light wavelenght is literally maxing out in that range. you are pretty much at the edge of what a normal light microscope can deliver.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

With no extra tricks, optical microscopes can resolve objects as small as half the wavelength of visible light, which means it would be possible to make out features down to about 200-250nm or so. So, technically there's still some ways to go, not to mention having worked with it a bit by now, in practice, without painstakingly finding the most optimal z height and all, I am only able to resolve features down to about 500nm (with the 40x objective that the microscope came with)... beyond that it's really a chore to really see anything on a real IC for example.

[@InfiniteBubbles]

@@BirdbrainEngineer yuss you just sounded so dissappoinnted with the "just to 300nm" and thats already about so close to how good it gets especially if you dont use a single wavelength light source love your video and will definitly use all the inspiration I can get for my own microscope, want to stalk bacteria with it tho

[@SJS826]

Genius!

[@12Mantis]

Neat build, in fact I think I'll dig out my old microscope and see what can be done with that. Now if anyone's interested DIY perks did a video on turning a laptop webcam into a usb webcam (so if you have a laptop for parts or know a computer repair shop), it's at: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eWnTd56eoLmpp9E As for the light source the Dollar Tree used to sale (perhaps they still do, just haven't seen them for a month or so) these clip-on selfie lights that possessed a ring shaped circuit board with a rechargeable battery occupying the center with three light settings. I figured it'd be possible to either use it as is or perhaps even take it apart and place the ring-shaped board just below the lens assembly.

[@TavishMcEwen]

FFMPEG mention!

[@sgroef6068]

6:50 flashbacks to The Sims 2 xD

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

:D

[@oliverer3]

After watching this video I stepped right into a research rabbit hole and now I have a the insane urge to design an SEM... Someone save me or my wallet will never recover!

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Haha, yeah that's the next step up but for now I will refrain. One day, though...

[@AaronHendu]

I loved my microscope as a kid...why do I not still have one? Hmmm...

[@andrecook4268]

Nice

[@dooleve]

nice job man

[@alexandrevaliquette3883]

I already too many distraction in my life, so I won't subscribe, but I've hit the thumbs up and wrote many comments.

[@alexandrevaliquette3883]

Ok, I changed my mind... fk you internet... I subscribed... I'm doomed again!

[@originalmianos]

Funny, your embarrassing code is layed out better than 99.9999% of youtubers. Never seen a youtuber use a class or more than one huge file. And proper platform io, not the embarrassingly crappy arduino ide.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Well I try at least haha... Need to learn how to use git properly and comment my code haha

[@guygerstel-wd6bs]

your cute

[@KORUPTable]

TROON!

[@interhaker]

Is this lad trans?

[@gechgr1850]

Who cares? Genius doesn’t have a gender.

[@herrcrazi7495]

How many times did your nails change colors in that vid ? lmfao always femboys doing the best electronics :3

[@alexandrevaliquette3883]

3:57 The fastest way I've found to write and learn Arduino coding: ask Chat GPT to do it for you and to label all the line to understand the purpose of them. I've tried it: work perfectly!! And you can ask to modify it, optimise, upgrade. No need to learn how to code. You can then adjust small stuff ex number of millisecond to wait between step and so on. You can also ask to draw the schematic and help you decide what module to buy, etc etc etc!

[@moth.monster]

cute :)