Digital Microscope for My Workshop

Recently I was trying to resolder some SMD elements the hard way and I noticed that my vision is not as good as I was thinking...

I have realized that I need something to help me out a magnifying glass or a microscope. By looking around I saw that I have almost everything to make a pretty simple microscope that can assist me in my soldering.

The goal here is not to break the bank and have something decent to work with.

• Esp32 Camera board - you can find it almost everywhere link to AliExpress
• Old Lens - in my case this is Helios 44m-4
• F-mount adapter for the lens - I have used it with my DSLR for macro photos link to AliExpress
• Macro photos extension tube - depending on what you are using I am gonna stick to the Nikon link to AliExpress
• 3D printed parts - tinkercad link
• FTDI USB to TTL Serial Converter - link to AliExpress
• Arduino ide with esp32 board incorporated with the examples - this tutorial can be helpful

We can fire up our printers and print where our image sensor will reside. this operation should take around 30 minutes or so depending on your printer.

First, we will start by removing the lens for our camera module. This can be done by hand or using a small screwdriver as there might be a dot of glue.

As we have our sensor free from the lens we can proceed to mount it to the board. For this, we have to open the small mounting bracket on the board and attach the sensor.

This step is relatively simple as we should already have the Arduino IDE installed and configured to work with our boar. For more detailed instructions we can check this tutorial.

First of all, wе need to connect our FTDI USB to TTL Serial Converter to our esp32 board.

After we have properly connected our board we can upload the needed sketch.

1. Load the example for the camera.
2. Do not forget to update your WiFi credentials
3. Upload the sketch

As we have everything from the steps above we can proceed with putting it all together:

Esp23 cam goes to 3d printed part.

3d printed part goes to the macro tube.

The macro tube goes to the F-mount adapter.

F-mount adapter goes to the old lens.

If we are still powering the board via FTDI USB to TTL Serial Converter we can use Arduino IDE Serial monitor to see the IP for the web interface.

A fun project that can be done with Pringles can and some duct tape instead of 3d printing and a macro tube.

What might be the next steps:

• as we have a pretty good distance from the object we need to make a holder for the lens above the object we want to monitor.
• Also, it will be helpful if we can use some LEDs to illuminate the object.

Any ideas will be helpful :)