Do it yourself bio-robotics: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:29, 14 December 2015

A reversible modification for a webcam which lets you take pictures of things far less than 1mm wide.

To make the microscope webcam you need the following:

Standard webcam with an adjustable focus-lens
Computer

Step 1

Dismantle the webcam cover

Step 2

Detached the lens of the webcam. Often this optical lens part is partially glued to the front of the webcam but it can be detached by twisting firmly.

Step 3

Put the lens, up side down, back on the webcam

step 4

Connect the webcam to the computer

step 5

To focus, just move the webcam towards or away from the object

Movie bio-robotics

Video created with a DIY microscope by Jona Andersen, Juriaan Boerman and Mark-Jan Tellingen during the workshop 'Bio-Robotics of Arjan Scherpenisse.

youtu.be/iB5cnaERx9c

Recognizing a plant in a pinch

by James Bryan Graves

When asked to assist how to quickly recognize a plant with a webcam I remembered an Apple WWDC presentation called "Find my iCone" an app that tracked an orange construction pylon using it's color.

I already had some web/Javascript code to do some chromakey (greenscreen) swapping, so I just re-purposed it. However, tracking the correct color of say "purple flowers" needed to be a little less fined grained then #ef0114 (for example, I have no idea what "color" that is by looking at it's hex values), so I grabbed a JS library to print colors as words.

Here's the code:

   <!DOCTYPE html>
   
    
        
    
    
      
      <h1>I don't see anything.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 '''Step 1'''
 Dismantle the webcam cover
 '''Step 2'''
 Detached the lens of the webcam. Often this optical lens part is partially glued to the front of the webcam but it can be detached by twisting firmly.
 '''Step 3'''
 Put the lens, up side down, back on the webcam
 '''step 4'''
 Connect the webcam to the computer
 '''step 5'''
 To focus, just move the webcam towards or away from the object