Re: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-03-13 Thread Beth Santos
Neat.

Cell phone technology?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/diy-cellphone-microscope/

---
*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 
Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Waveplace/270512992335?ref=ts
Twitter: @waveplace http://twitter.com/waveplace



On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:10 PM, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.orgwrote:

 Finally got my Veho microscope in the mail today (had to cancel the
 Digimicro order). Followed Kevin's instructions and it just worked
 auto-magically. Thanks Kevin! So we are good to go for a microscope demo
 @Scale9x. No dice on the Intel play microscope but not giving up yet.

 Cheers,
 Cherry
  On Jan 20, 2011 3:20 PM, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote:
  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 curious...@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 

Re: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-03-13 Thread Walter Bender
On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 1:48 PM, Beth Santos b...@waveplace.org wrote:
 Neat.
 Cell phone technology?
 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/diy-cellphone-microscope/

“It still amazes me how you can build near-research-grade instruments
with cheap consumer electronics,”

I guess people's idea of cheap spans a broad range.

-walter


 ---
 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


 On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:10 PM, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org
 wrote:

 Finally got my Veho microscope in the mail today (had to cancel the
 Digimicro order). Followed Kevin's instructions and it just worked
 auto-magically. Thanks Kevin! So we are good to go for a microscope demo
 @Scale9x. No dice on the Intel play microscope but not giving up yet.

 Cheers,
 Cherry

 On Jan 20, 2011 3:20 PM, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote:
  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.
 

RE: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-03-11 Thread Caryl Bigenho

Love it!  Tweeted it!

Caryl

From: b...@waveplace.org
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:48:36 -0500
To: cwith...@ekindling.org
CC: hea...@lists.laptop.org; devel@lists.laptop.org; cbige...@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [Health] $30 microscope

Neat.
Cell phone technology?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/diy-cellphone-microscope/


---
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



On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:10 PM, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote:


Finally got my Veho microscope in the mail today (had to cancel the Digimicro 
order). Followed Kevin's instructions and it just worked auto-magically. Thanks 
Kevin! So we are good to go for a microscope demo @Scale9x. No dice on the 
Intel play microscope but not giving up yet. 



Cheers,

Cherry

 
On Jan 20, 2011 3:20 PM, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote:
 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

Re: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-02-18 Thread Cherry Withers
Finally got my Veho microscope in the mail today (had to cancel the
Digimicro order). Followed Kevin's instructions and it just worked
auto-magically. Thanks Kevin! So we are good to go for a microscope demo
@Scale9x. No dice on the Intel play microscope but not giving up yet.

Cheers,
Cherry
 On Jan 20, 2011 3:20 PM, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote:
 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 curious...@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 cwith...@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 

Re: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-02-07 Thread Sridhar Dhanapalan
On a related note, does anyone know if the $1 microscope is being
successfully used in the field?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Microscope



On 21 January 2011 10:20, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote:
 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 curious...@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 cwith...@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 

RE: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-02-07 Thread Caryl Bigenho

Hi All...


In one of my previous lives, as a science teacher, I taught high school and 
middle school students the wonders of the world of microscopic things.  While a 
$1 microscope sounds wonderful, it doesn't sound very practical.  Attaching the 
lenses to the camera lens on the XO, as it seems to be described, would require 
holding the sample up to the lens, or holding the XO over the sample.  This 
would be pretty tricky with a petri dish full of protozoa!  The problem of 
focusing is also a concern.


I would love to try a microscope with a usb connection.  In fact, I may buy one 
to add to by XO gadget collection.  But I have a couple of questions.


Is the resolution of Mary Lou's $1 microscope dependent on the lens or the 
Record Activity or something else?  Would a usb microscope with better 
(focusable) lenses give higher resolution?


Is there already an Activity for Sugar that supports the use of a usb 
microscope?


Caryl
 From: srid...@laptop.org.au
 Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2011 00:53:21 +1100
 To: kgordon...@gmail.com
 CC: devel@lists.laptop.org; hea...@lists.laptop.org; olpc...@lists.laptop.org
 Subject: Re: [Health] $30 microscope
 
 On a related note, does anyone know if the $1 microscope is being
 successfully used in the field?
 
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Microscope
 
 
 
 On 21 January 2011 10:20, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote:
  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

Re: [Health] $30 microscope

2011-01-20 Thread Kevin Gordon
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 curious...@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 cwith...@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 curious...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Hi all,
 
  I ordered this Digimicro 1.3mp USB microscope and it arrived from
  China