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My digital camera died...

It's pretty complex and fragile inside. Not even sure where to start to figure out what happened. It's a Kodak Easyshare CD80 and for a while it was having this problem more and more frequently where it would seem to go into sleep mode to save battery a little too soon, and wouldn't come out. Normally after a while of sleeping it closes the lens and actually shuts off. In standby you just hit the picture taking button to get it back up and running. Well, I would have to turn it off and back on before it would work again. It's like they built in a special circuit that would disable it after a number of uses. Maybe by accident somewhere along the path of this controller, I wouldn't even know how to recognize it on any of the boards. So it's like I have to test each and every tiny component to ever have the chance to fix it if I don't have a diagram or know how to decipher the board myself.

Well this lead to my idea. I really wish I had a microscope capable of analyzing food, water, soil, blood... etc. For home-based recognition of basic known substances. It seems like I could use this camera receiver with a different lens to get a digital microscope with some potential... it's a 10mp camera.

(what would you call this part, the photocell type thing [about 1cm wide .75cm tall and mounted on a flimsy laminate circuit board having like 30 or so copper contacts across the 1 inch wide edge. The cell itself has 10 pins on each of 4 sides. and on the bottom of the board is some ultra small components looking like resistors and transistors. But I wouldn't know for sure. The brand label looks like a backwards RU smashed together. and it says "Cmi TA G 1 94V-0 0927 05)

Could I reuse this likely still functional part of the camera, and perhaps other parts of it as well to take pictures and save them to view on a computer? Perhaps using the LCD screen as well I would like to find a way of incorporating it onto a basic microscope at the eyepiece. I figure this camera became a good volunteer piece for learning about what I have to do. Maybe this isn't what's typical of this discussion forum. And perhaps you know better places for such questions... Any helpful words are more than welcome. Thanks for reading and giving your thought energy over to this.

While I'm at this, if you happen to know a good microscope set up that's affordable for the full scale analyzing of those things I mentioned above, for nutrition, health, and capability of recognizing threats in the ground and water and certain food products... I know I'll have to save up for that over time, but I want to make the best choice about it, so if you happen to know anything about this your help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Reply to
Quincy Jones
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Sounds like the battery failing

You tell us, do you know how to do it?

I'd add an external lens onto a working camera. Junked film cams are good for lenses.

NT

Reply to
NT

Microscopes, per se, aren't all that useful at recognition beyond characterization of "basic known substances" ("stuff in dirt", "stuff on a leaf", "stuff in water", etc.). What adulterant in a tomato or on a chunk of broccoli, for example, would you expect to be able to recognize? With proper stains and, perhaps, amplification in an appropriate culture medium, plus a fair amount of training, one may be expected to recognize and quantify the occurrence of, say, E. coli. Bacteria are pretty danged small, though.

When the bread turns fuzzy blue, throw it out. The mycelium is certainly present before the fruiting body appears but do you really intend to stabilize and section that loaf of WonderBread each time before reaching for the toaster?

At any rate, check out

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for some ideas on what's available at the different price points and configurations. I have one of their Omano 20-40 stereo scopes that I use for surface mount rework and inspection. Inexpensive, battery-powered LED lighting (and so easily portable around the bench), comes with carrying case. I'm happy with it, for what I do with it. Can also do decent digital photos through an eyepiece; no separate camera mount needed. However, it's no more able to see a bacterium than I am...

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Reply to
Mycelium

It's called an image sensor. It usually output image pixel data in a parallel bus at high speed. For a 40 pins chip, most likely in 16 bits. You need to have a controller capable of receiving and decoding the image data, most likely an FPGA. Developments could take months for you (if you have money to hire) and years for me (i am slow).

Sound like you are trying to reverse engineering a Kodak product and rebuild it in a different form. It might be cheaper to buy Kodak, just to avoid pattern litigation. Last i check, Kodak is available for around 300 million dollars.

Reply to
linnix

Mental picture of fuzzy blue fruiting body from Mycelium. Now must go scrub brain with lye. ;-)

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

Then you have to ask yourself if it was real or merely a mycelium induced hallucination. Their tendrils reach quite far, you know...

One can eat holes in one's brain faster with say... Absynthe (real Absynthe).

Reply to
Mycelium

Check the battery contacts, that seems to be the #1 reason the cameras fail.

Reply to
jw

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