Well, I promised this one a long time ago. Finally, I have found a good solution.
This is a build for a Very Very low cost computer interfaced microscope camera.
Web Cams have developed to the point where fairly high resolution images camn be had with a fairly inexpensive unit.
This project uses a low cost Web cam with a CCD (Fast) sensor with a greater than 4000 by 4000 pixel array! It also captures at a rate of up to 160 frames per second. This makes it a good candidate for microscope work but I am sure that most other web cams will function fairly.
This one comes with software for high resolution capture on a Windows machine. A Mac will recognize it and capture at fairly high resolutions as well.
And the best part is that the advertised features are real.
So, How did I do this?
Easy, it turns out.
First, get a cheap web cam that you will not feel bad about wrecking.
This is what mine looks like.
Next, Remove the support attachments. This makes it less cumbersome when mounting onto the scope.
Now, the camera is ready to gut. The lense on the front needs to be removed because the sensor needs to see the raw image coming up from the microcope tube. Also, this lens is coated with an IR filter material which will give distortion to the image (ghost images). In order to do this you need to remove the screws (2 or 4) that hold the front of the case to the back. These may be covered by some sort of label.
The camera is usually attached to the back casing like this:
In some cases, the circuit board is attached to the front casing. In this case, you will need to remove the 2 screws that hold it to the front in order to get to the lens.
Now, Unscrew the lens and it looks like this.
Note: The sensor is that dark thing under the lens. It picks up every imperfection. Do Not Touch it, unless you want to spend hours with a Q-Tip and alcohol trying to get finger grease off of the sensor. Also, from this point on, be careful to keep the sensor away from any dust.
Reverse the dis-assembly procedure and the camera should look clean and like this:
Now, to mount onto the scope.
Remove the eye piece from your scope and center the Web Cam over the opening. Plug the USB port into your computer and fire up the software. Light up your scope and center the image. Electrical tape can be used to hold the centered camera in place.
In the case of this Web Cam, the outer lens ring, on the front casing, is exactly the size of the ocular tube so no centering was necessary. Perfect fit!
I have built a tube for my trinocular scope and placed my web cam on that.
Now, these pictures were taken with my digital camera of the computer screen. The focus and resolution are much better. The Photo Booth application overlays the running QuickTime application, both receiving and displaying the microscope/Web Cam image.
At 100x (approximately)
And at 430x (approximately)
So there you have it. I will be posting some pics.
If you give this a try, please document your work here. I am hoping to see some improvements on this work.
AND Please feel free to ask questions.