[Health] $30 microscope

Thu Jan 20 18:20:31 EST 2011

Folks:

We've been able to get the Veho USB 400x 1.3Mp/2.0Mp interpolated to work
on  the XO 1 and XO 1.5 under 10.1.3 with 'Cheese'.  However, with this high
resolution webcam, you just need to make sure it attaches itself to the USB
2.0 bus.  If for some reason it comes up and attaches to the 1.1 bus, one
gets get what looks like a 1970's color TV test pattern when starting the
camera software..

I can't speak to the specifics of the DIgiMicro; we bought a bunch of
different microscope samples from various HK based ebay vendors before
standardizing on the Veho.  It is fully uvc compliant and also works on
Ubuntu, Windows and the Mac.  On Ubuntu, we use guvcview to control it.  Due
to the fact we needed to support multi-continent co-curricula, we needed one
that ran everywhere on everything.  It  can cost between $40 and $75 from
ebay depending on the day of the week, it seems.  Be careful, the one one
wants is the '004' product not the '001' or '004'.

On the XO, Mikus Grinbergs has since done some magic for us to get guvcview
to load on the XO, since guvcview only has an Fc12, 686 RPM.  It gets more
complicated since some of the dependencies for guvcview need the FC12/686
rpm versions which one has to go out and find manually,  while other
dependencies need the FC11/586 standard repo versions.  For us, we are still
in the process of bullet-proofing this so young users can mod their 10.1.3
box to install guvcview.  guvcview has way more user-definable parameters
than does Cheese.

So, for simplicity, one can just install Cheese for now.  It works from
Sugar if called from the terminal prompt.  It wont run properly as root,
just stay as default OLPC user., dont know why, dont really care. Personally
I run as little as possible as root.    A bunch of weird messages come up
once invoked from Sugar, but it does eventually come up.  It will flash the
built-in cafe camera light then proceed over to the USB camera.  You can
edit the preferences in Cheese to default to the USB camera.  If the USB
camera isnt seen in teh camera device drop-down, then for some reason it
isn't being handled properly at the driver level.  In terminal, check the
output of the lsusb command, the camera should be seen there with a nice
description and USB vendor./eqpt number. Once you are doen in cheese on the
the sugar side, unfortunately you have to stop it 'inelegantly'' as it has
no sugar activity button. You can use the ctrl-q, or function key back to
the activity wheel and kill it from there.   However, this seems to leave a
little stub up and running, so you may have to reboot to get it going again.

On the other hand the successful yum install of cheese puts itself nicely
into the graphics submenu on the Gnome side, and behaves nicely there. You
can then save your microscope photos ot the fiel system (preferably on an
external SD card or a USB stick, then look at the photos from the Sugar
side.  Just remember INSTALL it as root, but run it as the normal default
user.

Summary.  USB uvc compliant webcams (microscopes) should just plug in and be
seen by both the XO 1.0 and XO 1.5. Then yum install cheese, and use the
Gnome side to do any 'photos'.

All caveats with respect to the snails-pace of the yum install are still in
effect ont the 1.0, we do a yum install downloadonly to a stick on a 1.5
(which does yum nicely), then yum localinstall from the stick to all the XO
1.0's to eliminate those install hanging and memory full issues.  As an
added benefit, Cheese has no other dependencies when installed to 10.1.3.

For those who saw our little tech-geek table at the SF summit, this is
exactly what we were demoing on the 1.5.  Daniel Drake and Paul Fox have
since done yeomen effort to bring the  uvc, sisusb, and ldusb drivers all
back into sync on the 1.0's and 1.5s at 10.1.3 .  Have fun, it really is
cool stuff.

KG

O n Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Mike Lee <curiouslee at gmail.com> wrote:

> [Copying everyone.]
>
> I haven't tried this with the new 10.1.3. But before that, it didn't
> work on the XO-1 without having to get into kernal hacking. Paul Fox
> confirmed that they are looking into adding support. I don't know if
> they have.
>
> I bought my Digimicro from DealExtreme for $31.10. The catch is they
> ship from Hong Kong (as I recall). It took 3-4 weeks to get the
> 'scope.
>
>
> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11743
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 3:03 PM, Cherry Withers <cwithers at ekindling.org>
> wrote:
> > Mike,
> >
> > I just ordered mine from Amazon. But we were discussing this on our
> > Squeakland meeting today
> > and wondering if you've tried this on the XO 1.0 as well and if you've
> tried
> > other brands?
> > The Digimicro is hovering around $37-$45 at Amazon (without shipping and
> > tax). Where have you found
> > them for $30?
> >
> > Thank you for your help!
> > --Cherry
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 8:14 PM, Mike Lee <curiouslee at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I ordered this Digimicro 1.3mp USB microscope and it arrived from
> >> China today. I was able to pretty easily get it running on an XO-1.5
> >> in Gnome. Photos and details here:
> >>
> >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/5188951606/in/photostream/
> >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/5188951710/in/photostream/
> >>
> >> Here's the reference I used for the installation:
> >>
> >>
> http://www.stealthcopter.com/blog/2010/03/digimicro-200x-zooming-usb-digital-microscope-in-ubuntu-linux/
> >>
> >> Mike
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Beth Santos <beth at waveplace.org>
> wrote:
> >> > Interesting microscope I found via Woot! today:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> http://www.suntekstore.com/1-3-mega-pixel-led-usb-digital-microscope-video-camera-10x__-230x-.html?&utm_source=woot&utm_medium=paid&utm_content=deals&utm_campaign=s0003
> >> >
> >> > For less than a solar panel you could be sending one or more of these
> >> > out
> >> > with every deployment...
> >> >
> >> > Beth
> >> >
> >> > ---
> >> > Beth Santos
> >> > Outreach Coordinator
> >> > Waveplace Foundation
> >> >
> >> > Tel: +1 610 797 3100 x 44
> >> > Fax: +1 610 797 3199
> >> > Cell: +1 603 661 1273
> >> > http://www.waveplace.org
> >> > Waveplace on Facebook
> >> > Twitter: @waveplace
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > Health mailing list
> >> > Health at lists.laptop.org
> >> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/health
> >> >
> >> >
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
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