I was looking at USB microscopes with the idea to get an inexpensive one for my desk or lab bench. We have 'real' stereo microscopes with long working distance for challenging soldering jobs, what I'm looking for is something:
cheap (< $200US) decent working distance (10cm or better) lighted stable stand decent frame rate, megapixels is not so important
I've seen the dinoscope TL models, but they seem really expensive ~$400 for what they are.
Any suggestions?
Andrew Dyer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
Dinolites regularly show up on eBay for under $200. Depends on what features you want.
I had to lurk a while, but I picked up a AM413T for $300 a while back. It has higher resolution & a number of nice features compared to the lower end models, including calibratable measurements.
Doug White
my desk or lab bench. We have 'real' stereo microscopes with long working distance for challenging soldering jobs, what I'm looking for is something:
what they are.
Like i said,digital cameras can do this; use a micro-USB to audio/video adaptor to a video capture board.
You can get microscope eyepiece USB cameras. Be careful, some of them have really oddball camera chips with limited OS support (like no Linux drivers, period, which bit us) but they DO work. Make sure they will fit your specific eyepiece, there are several systems. But, if you have a good long working distance microscope, there's no way you will duplicate those optics without spending some money. We've used it mostly to document some microscopic findings on boards.
Jon
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