Grid Enabled USB Microscope


[Jock] sent in this photo gallery showing a Lego Mindstorm automated microscope. I dug up the paper that was published about this hack to find out just what the idea was. It’s a proof of concept showing off automated data collection – the Mindstorms are used to allow the intel QX3 microscope to take data over a grid area. It’s an interesting idea for collecting time series data. The computer interface is a bit overly complex, but the Lego’s make this sort of project accessible to the amateur roboticist.

13 thoughts on “Grid Enabled USB Microscope

  1. This seems like a great idea all by itself — but I seem to remember, several weeks ago, a hack someone did which allowed scanning of 8mm and Super8 film for conversion to DVD.

    Blending these two projects together, would it be possible to have an automated, frame-by-frame, ultra-high-resolution movie film scanner? Of course, if so, it would yield scans which would be much higher resolution than the original 8mm or Super8 film, but I like the idea of scanning those images so tightly that even the individual film grains are scanned…..

  2. do’n’t be a d’ick apo’stro’phe na’zi

    p.s. ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

  3. i think a good hackit would be coming up with the most original hack involving legos or duplos, with a limit restriction to what most people would reasonably have (to keep someone from being a dumbass like Apostrophe Nazi by submitting “build a house out of mindstorms” or something of a similar scale)

    i actually think i’m going to suggest that to will and see what he thinks

  4. elomis: I think you mean “every time you put an apostrophe where it isnt meant to go, jesus kill’s a kitten”(sic)

    Keeping with the off-topic flavour, would someone tell the guys who made this to please, for the love of humanity and all that’s sacred, get a captcha to avoid endless pages of “hmm that’s quite interesting and by the way get cheap cialis here”.

    I like the hack though.

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