The OpenFlexure 3D printable microscope

I&#x27;m wondering now there if are any cheap entry level stereo microscopes or at least any microscopes that work with indirect reflected light instead of through-slide illumination. LEDs have gotten laughably strong, so if we can turn a night forest into day, surely we can illuminate some microbes?<p>These standard ones are certainly useful for high magnification, but they don&#x27;t really work at all for anything opaque. For the average person doing this on a hobby level, looking at random objects slightly beyond macro level is far more interesting than having to painfully prepare slides for things you aren&#x27;t even sure are actually there or not.

This is amazing. I think this would be a fun project for me and the kids to make and have a useful tool to help them with their curiosity.

There is a similar project called UC2 where the emphasis is on modularity of the different configurations (simple building blocks) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;openUC2&#x2F;UC2-GIT">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;openUC2&#x2F;UC2-GIT</a>

This is outside my area of expertise .. But I&#x27;d be surprised if you can easily best a phone camera without paying obscene dollars for special sensors<p>A bit of an anecdote, but a lab in our building got some expensive fancy digital microscope. But we noticed that if you took a cheap old school microscope and stuck an iPhone on the lens the resulting images were infinitely more crisp vivid and high-res<p>The only obstacles are getting consistent colors and calibration as well as making a mount to hold the phone at the right distance from the lens

btw, the OpenFlexure forum link is 404.