Re:Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
by dekhn on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @10:18AM
(#25507009)
thorlabs cameras, and scientific cameras in general, have very different response functions. useful if you want to make quantitative measurements, accurately represent a B&W scene, etc. I use a BlackFly (FLIR) camera on my scope, but have been looking to do something similar to you, since the camera API is not V4L2, but rather a custom framegrabber SDK.
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I just wanted something to capture transmitted light images on a real-longterm setup. Turns out the best method is to wheel a simple tissue culture microscope to a warm room and put a cell phone on the eyepiece :) made some cool movies for sure!
Currently I'm playing with this: https://github.com/bionanoimaging/UC2-GIT
which does a lot of that (mainly for educational purposes- I think most scientists should focus on getting grant money to buy professional equipment).
That's a candidate for sure, my efforts slightly predate the 3d printed microscope revolution slightly, and I had to MacGyver my way to prove I can image cell cultures long-term without spending 2-300k (since I was doing wild goose chase hypotheses) and hence this solution.
Are you playing with it in a garage or in an academic / industrial setting?
I'm not yet ready to start but my goal is to try and set up an actually productive garage lab - maybe use some neighbouring univ core facility on occasion but not to set up a lab there. Not a fan of academia in general and hope to not contribute money/ideology towards perpetuating that ponzi scheme!
Garage. The goal is to build a prototype which could then be scaled to a warehouse-sized robotic biological experimental system. But, I have also worked with such things in commercial settings.
I'd say that for most real scientists, it makes more sense to raise the funding to buy a professional scope because a lot of the dumbness is engineered out so scientists can just sit down and be productive.
Re:Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
by justincormack on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @11:51AM
(#25508272)
Yeah I have one of these, the picture is nice with good lighting (I have a black and white one, with an antique 16mm film camera lens). Going to write a OBS plugin for it when I have time.
I'd be curious about this. I think what would make sense is to write a V4L2 driver for it, then any app that uses V4L2 could use it (on Linux). Or, is it far easier to write an OBS plugin than a driver?
Re:Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
by justincormack on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @01:43PM
(#25509645)
Yeah thats another option. I haven't found one, but I do have userspace code that works.
Thorlabs don't make their own cameras by the way, they're white-label IDS Imaging products (at least they used to be).
Most of these [machine vision] cameras will communicate using genicam, so you can use libraries like Aravis and maybe there's a way of getting that to talk to V4L.