Will this idea work? (3D view)

The Mantis is adjustable for ip distance. As you turn the knob, the 3D effect changes. You can make parts on a board go from hyper-Manhattan to *inverse* 3D depth - very weird - with some eyestrain at the extremes.

You can also move your head around and sort of look around parts, like flying a tiny helicopter around your chip. Great visuals. I don't know of any other optics that does this.

John

iron is

peer into

Ever thought about a stereo head mounted display and two cameras? A few years ago I used such a setup for a robotics project. Awesome!

Still, a Mantis or the famous Q hat with magnifiers are the way to go for this kind of work.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
                     "If it doesn\'t fit, use a bigger hammer!"
--------------------------------------------------------------

I've done both split field and ODD/EVEn line stereo video. Also tried chroma based stereo as well. I like ODD/EVEN line with the goggles. Used a LM1881 and a couple of monostables for the timing. The trick with the cheap cameras that do not have genlocking is to buy a third camera, mask off the ccd for making blackburst, and then lock both slaves, this gets rid of the AGC circuits in the cameras that shift timing when looking at bright light sources. Most Panasonics and some Sonys I tried will move off the peak of flourescent light sources . Cheap older BW security cameras have lock BNCs on the back, or will lock to the power line. Power line locking is good enough for driving a model car, but not always good enough for microscopy, unless you have really good positioning control over the cameras

Sony cameras with VBS sync are cheap. Sony EX480s look right down the eye pieces with no mods, you want a "block camera", designed for OEM use. Comes complete with serial port control of EVERYTHING, including phase delays. But VBS is good enough for the eyes, but not for frame grabbers, and for that you need true genlocking.

Stereo vidio is amazingly tolerant till you try to digitize it with a frame grabber, then you need the real genlocked cameras.

Steve

One of the talk radio guys (Clark Howard?) was talking about a site that sold single-prescription glasses for as low as $18. Unfortunately I now need bifocals to get anything done. I really should have trifocals but they don't make 'em big enough for monitor work.

I'm just in reading-glasses mode, but my close-work glasses are big things that make me look like a frog (or more like a frog, I'm not sure). Plenty of space for big bifocal areas, and as a plus, they don't get lost because I'm way too vain to wear them outside the lab!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

If a couple of jobs pan out this week as I'm hoping, I'll probably go buy one. On the priority list, it's probably below the DPSS laser but above the HP 8566B. Now if my the USPS would just disgorge my nice HP

35665A from their NJ customs warehouse, I could do a few noise measurements I've had on hold....

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

My problem is that while I don't really need them to see distance (I've acquired an astigmatism, so they would help) I'd like a distance prescription in there because they get banged up in my pocket. I also can't read the dash in the car. ;-)

Been thinking... Maybe I do not need a microscope. And maybe do not need 2 cameras. As I have 2 Asus LCD shutters glasses... I came up with this configuration (back of the envelope drawing): ftp://panteltje.com/pub/simple_3D_enlager_img_1522.jpg

The idea is to get 2 views, left + right eye, each looking through the LCD shutters, projected on the small PAL CMOS sensor in the camera I have, so to remove the lens, and replace it with 2 +8 lenses that are mirrored into the same sensor. I wonder if those could be cheap contact lenses? The V sync detector and flipflop switches each field, and blinds the left or right light path. That is actually a PIC (have that part working for some other project). And the output in parallel also drives the other LCD shutter that the user looks through, watching the picture on the analog color TV portable (=monitor when using the SCART composite input).

The field of view comes at about 12mm, displayed on a 25 cm wide screen, that makes a magnification of more then 20.

So this could, if I can get the optics working (do I need curved mirrors to correct for distortion due to the angles?), turn out to be an other break the price barrier project?

Or is this too simple to be true?

ed text -

I've had Zeiss continuous-grind Varifocal glasses since I was 50. They work fine. Of course, since my right eye is short-sighted, I take then off for fine work.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Rich,

Thanks for the reply.

$500US. Ig. (But very nice specs.)

It looks a bit like this one for $350:

1.3 Megapixel Digital Microscope

At one point I bought a Digital Blue QX5 USB-attached microscope with the idea that I could at least do a good job of inspecting my solder joints. Turned out that I couldn't get the software running under MSWinXP and I couldn't find a reliable Linux driver for it. I do recall that the object being viewed had to be _really_ close, and it needed strong illumination.

I have a replacement pair coming from Zenni in a few days, and if this pair works I'll probably try that. My first pair came with a left lens that was unusable unless I rotated it 90deg; my optometrist said that the two lenses were cut with different base curves, and Zenni said it was a problem with the prescription. Sigh.

Thanks again...

Frank

--
  Youth is much more capable of amusing itself than is now
  supposed, and in much less mortal need of being amused. The
  only real warning against solitude and stagnation which needs
  to be uttered is that you really need to be rather young and
  strong in order to get the fun out of them.
           -- G.K. Chesterton: On the Thrills of Boredom (1932)

I doubt these work with TFT monitors. You'll have a hard time putting two completely different images on a TFT monitor within several milliseconds.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
                     "If it doesn\'t fit, use a bigger hammer!"
--------------------------------------------------------------

On a sunny day (Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:18:59 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in :

mmm works with my LCD (4 ms).

There are problems with X sync though, as normally X refresh is not related to anything.... and always 60 Hz for my LCD. So you need to grab and sync to the X retrace to do it right. Else the picture sometimes irregulary switches between left and right eye.

In the back of the envelope drawing I presented, it is clearly stated 'CRT monitor'. Actually CRT PAL portable TV, they go for 90 Euro these days, 100 with build in DVD player, both models have a SCART and PAL composite in, so you can use them as monitor.