Do it yourself bio-robotics

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.