Tod reviewed Adafruit’s USB microscope with magnifications ranging from 20x to 200x. He rigged up a custom holder from a microphone stand and some magnets.
This is a full review of the USB microscope that is sold by Adafruit. It does 20x to 200x and also will let you take measurements if you enter the magnification you are using. I will let the video explain everything but I added some extra photos after the video.
If you live in Ireland or UK you can also pick those up at Maplin retail stores. http://www.maplin.co.uk/usb-digital-microscope-with-400x-magnification-286566
(I’m pretty sure that’s the same one). I’ve had it myself for over a year… and it’s proven itself useful.
Decent enough review — showed that its not really suitable for real-time soldering, which kinda sucks. but for the price its still pretty cool to have around the lab!
I have the same piece of crap only 20x and 400x (I wrote about it here: http://dangerousprototypes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2201&p=22150&hilit=usb+microscope#p22149 )
Some serious problems
– non continuous magnification (only 2 descrete values)
– the LIE about resolution, the camera inside is 640×480, the software just re-sizes the image real time but your data coming from camera is just 640×480 :( so megapixels they talk about don’t exist
– the “holder” is a piece of junk and becomes worse in time (you can’t tighten it at all it still slips)
– DOF sucks big time, in 400x it’s microns depth, fairly unusable for proper inspection of joints, in 20x it’s ok for testing, not usable for realtime soldering under camera