Two months ago I was able to take a few days off and used the time to visit a friendly couple with their child in their new house near Berlin. We celebrated a birthday, went for a walk at the lake and enjoyed the last warm days of the year. The next morning we sat together for breakfast and talked about art and architecture. Somehow my friend came to the topic of technology and he asked me if I was also interested in smaller components, smartphones and microchips. I told him that I was already interested in it, but had not yet invested in the tools and devices, because a purchase is expensive, if you do not want to order things from China.
He smiled at me and told me to follow him into the house. There we went down an old wooden staircase and came into a cellar full of all kinds of tools, technical equipment and computer parts. He picked the Eduval 4 microscope out of a cardboard box and pressed it into my hand. It was very heavy and I took a closer look at it. He told me that the microscope was still from his GDR school days and that his teacher gave it to him to graduate. But my friend had never been interested in biology, so it was in a cellar all these years and slowly settling dust. I was supposed to take it with me and use it for my projects. I denied it and wanted to give him the microscope back, but he shook his head and said:
A ship is built to carry passengers or goods on the sea and not to bunch the ship in the port.
I disagreed and said that the microscope could not be connected to a computer and that it was of little use to me. He laughed cheerfully. “You are one of those electro-technical hackers who will surely come up with something and as I know you, you already have an idea that is slowly forming in your head”. He was right, because a year ago I tried to build a microscope out of a Raspberry Pi Zero, but unfortunately a component broke and the project fell asleep. But I still had the camera and a Raspberry Pi in the first version. It wasn’t that powerful, but it should be enough for a microscope. After a few days in Berlin I was on my way back on the train and drew the first sketches. Since the microscope was already complete and working, all I had to do was provide everything with a digital channel that I could connect to a monitor.
In the first step I screwed the single board computer to the back side of the microscope. That was quite easy and I only had to drill two small holes for the screws. Since I wanted to store many photos and videos, I decided to use an external hard disk on the left side. I chose the Samsung 1000.0GB (ST1000LM024). It can be connected to the Raspberry Pi with a USB cable. The connection to the monitor was made with a HDMI to VGA connector, so that the picture can be displayed. For the Raspberry Pi camera I built a small module out of cosplay foam, which I can put on the ends of the microscope. After that everything just had to be wired. With this mod I had made an old device fit for the year 2019 and could now take digital pictures in very high resolution.
Herewith I would like to thank my friend and wish him and his family all the best. The microscope has got a good place in my laboratory and will be used for the next projects.