The Foldscope Project has been an interesting one-- a low-cost microscope made primarily from paper, offering 140x magnification: <a href="https://www.foldscope.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.foldscope.com/</a><p>"Foldscope Instruments Inc’s mission is to break down the price barrier between people & the curiosity and excitement of scientific exploration!"
I found this 2019 PyCon UK talk a good overview of the microscope.<p><a href="https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2019/robotic-microscopy-for-everyone.html" rel="nofollow">https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2019/robotic-microscopy-for-eve...</a>
Isn't that a digital microscope? I thought an optical microscope would be one that just uses lenses and eyepieces to magnify and show the images to one or more eyes.<p>Maybe I've missed something. It looks cool - but I'm not sure I understand what the purpose of OpenFlexure is from reading the website, what does it do that an old fashioned optical/mechanical microscope doesn't (or one with a digital eyepiece)? Is this meant to find things automatically?
Earlier iterations of this were used successfully as part of a water quality monitoring in Tanzania:<p><a href="https://www.waterscope.org/about-us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.waterscope.org/about-us/</a><p>Richard Bowman (previously Cambridge uni, now Bath) was the main driver of these microscopes and is a great, highly intelligent person. Many other people have contributed to the project in small and large ways over the years.<p>Some other links:<p><a href="https://3dprint.com/165457/openflexure-3d-printed-microscope/" rel="nofollow">https://3dprint.com/165457/openflexure-3d-printed-microscope...</a><p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7249832/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7249832/</a>
This is a super cool project. Though I think the website could be a lot more upfront about what is needed to make this and what this can accomplish. A quick list of pats, estimated cost, specs and a sample photo would be really helpful in assessing whether this is a better deal that a $150 used microscope.
As it is, it takes three clicks to find the list of parts required and no cost estimates are offered.
<a href="https://build.openflexure.org/openflexure-microscope/v6.1.5/docs/#/0_bill_of_materials" rel="nofollow">https://build.openflexure.org/openflexure-microscope/v6.1.5/...</a>
On first glance it appears to be vaporware but there is at least one published image apparently created with the device:<p><a href="https://openflexure.discourse.group/t/sharing-an-almost-whole-slide-scan/455" rel="nofollow">https://openflexure.discourse.group/t/sharing-an-almost-whol...</a>