USB microscopes

[Andrew Dyer]

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?

 

[Doug White]

Andrew Dyer <amdyer@gmail.com> wrote in
news:7f67933f-f650-4047-add0-9eddc69156db@googlegroups.com:

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?

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

 

[Robert Baer]

Andrew Dyer wrote:

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?
Like i said,digital cameras can do this; use a micro-USB to

audio/video adaptor to a video capture board.

 

[Jon Elson]

Andrew Dyer wrote:

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?
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