Nothing says "Merry Christmas" to a geek like a new piece of technology. Here is mine, a Celestron LCD digital microscope. (Or is it digital LCD microscope? Oh, whatever.) I've already taken several images with it, including the ubiquitous "let me image my hair follicle". That to people who work with microscopes is analogous to the "Hello, World!" program that all new programmers compile and run.
How is this new microscope? In a word, cool! I love the images it takes, which it will do at 1600x1200 without going to the (always crappy) digital interpolation. It takes really good videos, too, which is nice if you need to be able to look at a particular object at several depths. As always, the depth of field of this scope is poor, but that's physics, not poor design or bad engineering. It came with 5 slides, which is not even close to being enough. I've already gone through all five. I'm now working my way through, well, any object that will fit under the lens. And being the engineer that I am, I've already got a list of improvements I'd like to see incorporated.
1) Add an option to delay the taking of the picture. This is a must-have. Right now, when you take a picture, the scope, while well made, moves ever so slightly. I'm having a helluva time taking clear images because the scope is still moving when the image is snapped. I'd prefer a short delay to allow me to push the button, let the scope stabilize again, then have it take the image.
2) It provides the option to put the date on the image. I'd prefer a metadata field that provides the magnification of the image, the color lens being used for setting the light color, and the type of lighting (underneath, above, or both).
3) Make the image capture remotely controllable. Yes, I realize this will take some more work. I want the ability to plug in the USB cord and be able to take the images from the computer. Hit a "Snap" button in a window, it takes the image and instantly transfers it to the computer. That solves the shaking problem AND the transfer problem all in one.
4) Make the codes for talking to the scope over USB open source. You want to get some buzz going for your scope? Do this and you'll have programmers the world over snapping up scopes left and right. They'll hack the living crap outta your scope and have it doing things you never thought possible. And you'll sell a boatload of scopes, to boot. So, why not? Oh, and you'd be able to ignore all of my suggestions because the hackers will do it for you!
Merry Christmas all!
1 comment:
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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