Eyepiece - Part 1 - the start of a new project

Now that winter has arrived, I am able to find time to start work on some of my planned indoor projects.

I have decided that the first project that I am going to work on is a camera eyepiece for my venerable Vickers M55 microscope - partly to save my poor aching eyes, and partly in order to allow me to do some micro photography.


Lacking the resources for purchase of a specialist microscope camera, I am going to put together a camera using an Raspberry Pi with its dedicated camera module (5 Mega pixel live feed, computer initiated capture including video). Later, I intend to add in a home-built spectrometer, but that's for another time.

This project will neatly encapsulate three of my interests - computers, microscopy and electronics.

I have had the computer for a couple of years. For anyone who doesn't know, this is a tiny single-board computer that runs the Linux operating system (amongst others). In this case, it will be running Raspbian the Raspberry Pi's custom distribution of Debian Linux.

It is a bit larger than a credit card and has a custom camera module that can be attached. The model B boasts both USB ports and a network port  as well as a high definition video output. Instead of a disc drive, it accepts a wafer-thin SD memory card.

In order for this minimalist system to be useful for large-scale image capture, it will need to have access to  a computer network which will allow it to use another computer's disc-drive for image storage. It will also allow access to the computer without having to have a keyboard and mouse attached to the Pi. The monitor, however, stays, as it is where the camera will send its preview video stream to.

It will also require quite a bit of programming in order for it to do its job.

While I am a more than competent computer user with some experience of using Linux computers as file servers, I am not that used to delving into the heart of the operating system in order to change the way it works.

Thus comes the first set of hurdles.

Next: Testing and initial setup.