Starlyte Imaging has completed support for Allied Vision array scan cameras. The driver suite fully supports:
This addition enables users with existing cameras to easily integrate Nebula on machines used for inspection, materials processing, and other industrial applications.
-Austin
Compact, Simplified TTL and DAC – Micromanager Native
I’m happy to share a new device I’ve been working on after encouragement from numerous clients. This new smaller version of the Triggerscope is intended to bridge the gap between large complex systems and more streamlined setups.
With the Mini you get:
This was a super fun project for me, as for the first time this board uses a bare MCU, which enabled my team to use any connector we wanted (hence the USB C) as well as full USB-Serial emulation on our own terms.
I’m also quite fond of the baby side-emitting LEDs on the outputs. These LED’s draw almost no current, but having them for all of the outputs makes it so easy to know whether a given control line is on or off. For the DAC LED’s, they change brightness with the output!
I tried to keep this design in-line with the current TG4, as it’s worked well for us over the years. This one is of course thinner, lighter and smaller, but in effect a truly miniaturized version of the larger model.
If you’d like to buy a Mini, we have them ready for sale on the store page here. For more information on the unit please see this flyer or the product page, thanks!
The Venerable Nikon Ti-E remains in service in research labs all over the world. One of the first autofocus-enabled instruments deployed with the integrated PFS, there isn’t much to ask for when it comes to a modern compound fluorescent stand. For owners of the instruments, it’s important to be aware of a big maintenance item on the scope – it’s motorized epi filter cube turret.
These turrets use a stepper motor to rotate the large carousel into various positions. The motor, control electronics, and positional sensing system are all high quality and should last many years, however, there is an internal gear which connects the belt drive to the carousel, and over time and stress of use, these gear rings have a tendency to crack.
I recently had a colleague ask if we could reverse engineer a solution for these, as Nikon charges a mint for them and in some cases they may be difficult to obtain depending on your region. You can see from the one supplied to me indeed had cracked, and under inspection, stress cracks from aged plastic are apparent.
It’s important to note here that these might “work fine” under manual rotation (where the motor isn’t applying stress to the belt drive). If you are having problems where the filter isn’t moving to position, or hearing any snapping, clicking or other unusual noises, it’s highly recommended to remove the carriage assembly, and to inspect the gear closely for cracks. This is a ~ 15 minute procedure and only requires a flashlight and removal of the top cover of the carriage.
If yours is cracked, we can supply a replacement within 1 day of order placement from our web store.
Here is a video of how to inspect and replace the ring as well.
It appears that more and more people want to use PWM control for illumination devices from Micro-Manager and other imaging software. PWM may be used for any number of applications, from high speed pulsing of an LED, or a laser, in order to reduce phototoxicity or just to control brightness, or to drive a DC motor at a varying speed, or to drive a device like a spinning disk to set the PRM. I figured I’d address this using the Triggerscope system controllers. rIn order to support PWM drive over an external device, I wanted a few useful functions to work in MM:
Version 407 of the Triggerscope firmware now supports this, and uses the existing driver available for these devices. I’ve made a short demo video showing how this works on an oscilloscope output. I’ll place an option for this on the store. Please get in touch with any questions or post here – thanks!
One of my recent projects which was very exciting and interesting was to build a custom imaging system for John Mclaughlin at Torch Therapeutics. This was a great build for a number of reasons, one of which is that Torch has allowed me to write a report on this build, which is greatly appreciated! From the tiny camera to similarly tiny NUC computer, this was a really interesting build, and I’m excited to share what I found during the testing and setup of the system. If you are looking for this type of custom integrated system, please take a look at what my company offers, as we’d love to build a system for you!
Scope Selection
What we were looking to build on this system was a low cost, yet fully automated imaging scope that would be easy to modify, simple to operate, and compatible with Micro-manager. In the short term, only Z control is required, but as the work grows, we wanted provision for XY automation, as well as autofocus tracking. For fluorescence excitation we an LED illuminator. After looking at several options, we selected the ASI RAMM microscope, with the inclusion of the Tiger unified controller, and the ASI LED excitation module. This system offers a complete microscope from one control box, on a scalable build platform, at a competitive price. I reviewed the RAMM scope a few years back, and happy to see that the quality and options have only increased over time. When I reviewed the system, it was required that I build the frame and align things correctly. The new systems ship completely assembled. I literally pulled it out of the box, plugged it in and things were operational. This out-of-box experience isn’t normally seen even in the “big 4” microscopes.
Another feature of this scope is the inclusion of all needed driver components in one box, ASI’s Tiger controller. This is a modular control box which can accept riser cards as-needed to drive various components. The controller on this setup was actually the largest electronic box in the system! From left to right are installed driver cards for joystick/control input, Z stage, LED output, and filter wheel control. Another great feature of this box is that when installing in Micro-manager, only a single USB connection, and single hub device are required.
LED Illumination
ASI offers a 4 channel LED illuminator, with option for almost any available LED module. This is a simple illumination setup using a common ladder-dichroic design. The open nature of the hardware allows for changes to the dichroics, or the LED modules, as may be needed by the customer as things change in the future. Each LED is driven using a simple audio style TRS cable, so connecting or disconnecting the LEDs from the driver is straightforward. On the output side of the module, an aperture diapragm is provided to avoid overfilling the back aperture of the objective.
Camera Selection
When selecting a camera, we wanted good QE, decent resolution, but didn’t require any advanced cooling or long exposures. Of the available options, the Pt Grey (FLIR) BlackFly camera fit the bill. Recently, Nico Stuurman @ UCSF wrote up a driver to support this camera in Micro-manager, and after working with it for w while I’m quite impressed. I was able to configure some tricky stuff, I tested various binning modes, subarrays, a wide range of exposure times, and things seemed stable. One suggestion if using this camera is to always snap an image after making changes, vs. simply clicking “live”.
The camera is unbelievably small, roughly the size of a 1″ cube. While cool at first glance, there are some drawbacks to such a design which I note below. I tested the camera at no-light conditions for 2 things – dark current over exposure time, and read noise. Read noise shows a 16-bit count standard deviation of 214.78. Value ranges on the noise floor ran 3264 counts max-min. This works out to a noise level of 4%. Calculation for this measurement was from 2 images in a sequence.
(Image1+2000) -image2 = 200 count centered noise level. (ranging around the 2k level).
Not the best performance from a typical sCMOS camera, but if we consider the next lowest-cost camera runs ~ $5,000, this is quite good in my opinion. There is some pattern noise apparent in the camera, below is an average of 20 exposures, all using 10ms exposure time. The image has been contrast enhanced and pseudo-colored for presentation.
So it appears the taps are drifting a bit. Just for grins I tossed one of these images into an FFT and redisplayed the spectrum for view. Looking at the output, my gut says the image below results from temperature bias on the output taps, and this bias is distributed across the back side of the sensor, or at least wherever the taps are located on the readout layer of the PCB. The higher frequency events at the center look like the typical clock timing jitter seen on any ADC. But this is only my non-expert observation – I’d love for any uber-camera experts to weigh in!
I also wanted to look at how bad the hot pixel effects would be using longer exposures. For this test I ran a set of exposure times from 1ms to 3000ms.
Increase in dark current over time was about as expected.
I think the bottom line on this camera is that it runs as hot as any other camera, but has neither the active cooling nor the inherent surface area to radiate heat well. I took a pic of it using my Flir One camera, and it runs at about 95°F while idle.
Does this mean the camera isn’t suitable for microscopy? Not at all? This is an amazing piece of tech for a very low price. I can imagine buying 3 of these, one for each of 3 emission channels on a single scope! My goal in presenting this information is to share what the current limitations are for such a product. I think the raw QE and ~2.3MP resolution of the camera make it a perfect fit for most microscopy jobs. Of course, there will always be need for higher end cameras, but for many run of the mill operations, this is a nice solution.
NUC Computer
When searching for an “imaging computer” on this project, I had initially considered using a Mac Mini, dual booted with windows 10. I’ve used this for a number of other projects, and it has always run well in windows. John suggested looking at the NUC as an option, which provided later opportunity to upgrade the RAM and disk space. After building it up (which only required installing memory and an SSD), this little guy kicked butt!I ran Windows 10-Professional x64 for this build, and used the latest version of Micro-manager. Funny that a $500 computer and a $500 camera can be had for what used to run ~ $15k!. I successfully ran this on timelapse for 10 hours, and captured streams in MM of 100 frames. I didn’t push the buffer too much or analyze the USB-3 performance, but overall this is a great little machine for simple capture of images.
Building this system was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed using non-traditional components for it. I think this type of system will become commonplace in the future, as more and more customers realize that traditional components, at a traditional high cost, Â aren’t always the best fit for their needs. If you are interested in this type of solution for your lab or company, please get in touch, as I’d love to build one just for you!
-Austin
The Waller Lab recently had a demo announcement of their awesome implementation of computational imaging. They have some examples on their lytro page, which look really cool! This got me thinking about the last 10 years or so, and how the combination of image capture with control over input and output image fields, has grown into a new force in microscopy today.
It’s interesting to consider what techniques fit into the field of computational imaging. Optical microscopy has pushed into an ever smaller domain of resolution, to the point that Abbe’s laws need to be avoided in order to pull resolution out of an image. Consider the initial techniques used for this – phase, DIC, confocal, TIRF, and the like are contrast enhancement techniques of enhancing an image’s contrast, by either increasing the signal intensity, or by reducing the surrounding noise/background intensity.  Beginning with the Apotome, and maybe earlier, with deconvolution, a combination of using multiple image samples with post-capture image processing, to gather more information than can be obtained by a single image, started to emerge.
Building on these first techniques, we can see further sampling methods in the optical domain, like STORM/PALM, where optical control over emission is coupled with high sampling rates, and back-end processing, to statistically avoid Abbe’s laws. I’d imagine FLIM falls into this category as well, using time and multiple images, again to extract more data than may be obtained by a single sample. Non-microscopy applications for yet another method in this domain, the employment of coded apertures, similar to this work from MIT, Â are growing in a number of imaging fields.
This combination, of computing power + controlled image fields, can be employed to do all sorts of as-yet untouched things with a conventional microscope. I can imagine that very soon, we will see a few of the following products available for use:
These are only a few ideas where this can go, but the general path I can see in the future is lower cost components, which are leveraged to do better and better work, which gives more imaging power to a greater number of researchers. At least – that’s a future I’d like to see 🙂
-Austin
While I haven’t had a chance to test these for accuracy, I was excited to find them while looking for some tube lens specs! You can find the file set here. These designs include some of the common infinity corrected objectives, as well as tube lenses, from every major microscope manufacturer.
I made this video to show how to use both a state device shutter object and a group shutter object in micro-manager. Hopefully others can make use of it!
Controlling a camera from an external trigger can be very useful. External triggering provides greater timing accuracy, direct control over exposure duration, and remote operation from TTL devices. This is a prime reason I made the Triggerscope controller, so I though it would be useful to explain how this works and what you can do with it.
What is “triggering”?
Most cameras built for scientific imaging or life science have a high density connector located on the back. 90% of the time, this is only used by savvy customers, or OEM integrators (companies buying a camera to place inside a machine for resale). The connector on the back of the camera will typically include 2 basic functions: Inputs (connections which send signals into the camera) and outputs (signals which activate when the camera is in a process or cycle).
Why use Triggering on a camera? Doesn’t the software control image capture?
Of course, software can tell a camera to snap an image. But when will that image be captured? Software needs to do more than say “snap” when you capture an image. Behind the scenes, a LOT of stuff happens!
What is quickly apparent is how much has to happen to get an image. In addition, the camera firmware will process some instruction sets faster than others! So some exposures might come back 200ms from issuing the “snap” button, while others will return in 130ms, 30ms, who knows!
So when precise timing is desired, and you really want that camera to fire at a specified time, triggering may be used. In this configuration, all software comms with the camera are pre-compiled, everything’s done. All of the steps above are performed, but the last step, the “camera performs operations above” sits….and waits…for the trigger line to run from 0 Volts to 5 Volts. As soon as that happens, an image is captured. Â For single frames, this is somewhat useful, but for sequences, this is great. We can capture images at some interval with 100% confidence timing is accurate.
Example
Let’s look at a typical camera, and pull the information we need from the user manual, in order to better understand triggered control. For this post, I’ll use the Photometrics CoolSNAP MYO camera, and as Photometrics makes it easy to read up on the user manual for their products, you can find the user manual here. Â Page 21 of the PDF describes the various operating modes for the trigger input. Note, the PDF also gives us information on EACH PIN used in conjunction with input and output signaling. There’s more than one!
Note, PM also provides short descriptions for each pin:
So – now we know which pins communicate which functions from the camera head connector – to connect to any of these, we’d simply connect a ground wire, and a positive pin wire to our chosen camera pin (for our needs, say Pin 1 – Trigger In)
Now – the most pertinent for us is the trigger in line, which runs in a few modes. Â Let’s review each, and why we might use them:
Trigger-First (sometimes called other things like “Fire”)
In this mode, the camera is set to snap some # of images (let’s say 10), but waits for a trigger input. Once that input goes high, the camera snaps 10 images as quickly as possible.
Strobe
In this mode, the camera is again configured for some # of images, but every image waits for a trigger.
Bulb
In this mode, the exposure time for each image is controlled by the input trigger. Again, multiple images are assumed (although Image qty of 1 is acceptable), and each frame waits for a trigger input pulse.
These three modes constitute the majority of uses for a typical triggered input line.
So, what does “receive a trigger” actually mean? Good question!
Triggering = TTL Control
Cameras, like almost all computer systems, are made to interact with external systems. One of the oldest, and most common methods, is referred to as “transistor transistor logic” or TTL. This boils down to the concept that if we specify an electrical voltage value of X as “off” and Y as “ON” then we can remotely flip a switch.
Many imaging devices use this communication method. A simple uniblitz shutter for example, can accept USB/serial data to open and close the shutter, but using TTL is faster and simpler. (just one thing to do, send 5Volts or 0Volts.) Below is an oscilloscope capture of such a signal. The vertical scale = Voltage level, and the horizontal scale from left to right = time elapsed. My annotations are in red. Note the yellow line, which indicates the signal.
Example Signal
Let’s say we have a device, for now, it’ll be the triggerscope 2, which is connected to the “TRIGGER” line of our camera. We want to signal the camera to capture immediately after we turn on an LED. In this case, we might use the triggerscope line 1 for the LED on and off, and line 2 for the camera signal.
In our software, we’d specify the camera exposure time, binning, and other usual parameters. In our controller, we’d set the output to high when we wanted to capture our image. Let’s use an example of 1 image:.
Tell the camera to acquire using software (nothing should happen yet!)
-Camera waits for a trigger signal
Tell our triggerscope to send a TTL high
-Camera captures an image.
Tell our triggerscope to send a TTL low
(nothing changes)
The above sequence can be used for a series of images. In that case, the acquisition would be configured for some # of frames (say 10), and the camera would capture 1 frame each time the signal swung from low to high.
To tie everything together, I’ve recorded  quick video explaining this on the scope. Check it out!
[youtube width=”600″ height=”365″ video_id=”4KNe5GxpuOo”]
So – now you know how cameras can be controlled via TTL – if anyone has questions please comment below, so I can address them. Thanks!
-Austin
I can’t believe I missed this excellent post from Sam Lord @ Everyday Scientist on how to insert an emission filter on your ocular lightpath. Having been hit by some untold number scopes wherein I either was observing, and switched to a no-emission-filter spot on the dichroic turret, or where I was observing and for one reason or another (software reset?!?!) the excitation shutter opened inadvertently, I can say with certainty that if you work on scopes long enough, this WILL HAPPEN, and it’s not good.
Of interest is the FDA’s ophthalmic instrument guidance docs for retinal radiation (sec H 2.c). From my perspective, it’s surprisingly vague.
Because prolonged intense light exposure can damage the retina, the use of the device for ocular examination should not be unnecessarily prolonged, and the brightness setting should not exceed what is needed to provide clear visualization of the target structures. This device should be used with filters that eliminate UV radiation (< 400 nm) and, whenever possible, filters that eliminate short-wavelength blue light (<420 nm).
“The retinal exposure dose for a photochemical hazard is a product of the radiance and the exposure time. If the value of radiance were reduced in half, twice the time would be needed to reach the maximum exposure limit.
Bottom line, if you have a scope which is equipped with an emission filter wheel, this is something you should address.
-Austin
Kickstarter has another iphone microscope project, this time it looks like an attachment which includes a 4 line LED, focusing and optical element system, and machined body. Looks cool!
-Austin
One of the best aspects of flying is being apart from the world. Not only terra firma, but the troubles of life, questions of the future, and concerns of the present. Flight requires attention to instruments while in operation, but long cross country flights leave the pilot with time to sit and watch the world unfold beneath as time passes.
Night flight brings an even more isolated perspective, where after a few minutes alone, you watch the gauges, view the small points of light from far off cities, and feel suspended in the air, utterly alone in the earth.
So last night, flying home with the sun setting behind me, I had a chance to consider the past week of ASCB, and what it meant to me.
Trade shows are hard. They are hard for the attendees and the exhibitioners. Attendees sit through lengthy talks, then browse the show floor and get bombarded by marketing, then have dinners with colleagues into the night. Exhibitors aren’t that different. Business meetings in the early morning, standing at the show floor booth all day, and then meetings and dinners with colleagues and contacts into the night. By the last day, everyone is happy to rest on the trip home!
Yet somehow in this internet era, there’s nothing like meeting face to face, to share life, to discuss new projects, and meet new people. This year was my 14th year of attending trade shows as a member of the microscopy community. In that time things have changed in many ways, and are exactly the same in others. I hunted through the Blanco archives and found a few shots from my very first trade show. What an impression it made on me! This was from Neuroscience 2001, with my good friend Will Casavan. I was there working for Technical Instrument Company at the time, and Will was with Media Cybernetics. 
Little did I know that it would be 14 years later, that Will would link me up with Echo labs, and a new and exciting chapter in my life would begin.
I bring up the past for two reasons. First, because I enjoy looking back to see how far this industry has come. 14 years ago the hottest product on the market was the Nikon TE-2000, and it sported 2, yes 2!, cameras. One for fluorescence, and one for brightfield. The inverted microscope with cameras, computer, capture cards (yes, the cameras required a card, check out that data cable!), monitor, supporting electronic boxes and cables, took up a large bench worth of space, and ran about $65,000.
Some might argue that this industry hasn’t evolved quickly enough, but consider the following. Almost every function performed on the microscope above can also be performed using the ECHO Revolve. Of course, while at the booth I was able to airdrop images like this one straight to my phone, allowing me to easily post them on the blog!
To me, this is a major step forward in research technology. I think the attendees who visited the ECHO booth would agree, as while working the booth I don’t think there was a single minute without at least 1 person looking at the scopes. In 2 of the 3 days I worked the booth, we couldn’t even break for lunch!
While writing this, Eugene Cho, CEO of Echo labs, sent me a great timelapse of the show. I think this is an excellent video, as it shows the additional hard work required for exhibitors, to set up and tear down these displays. ECHO hand made the booth for the show, and the personal touch really made the booth stand out from the crowd in my opinion!
Of course, there are many other advances taking place in the industry! I got to speak with Silvia Foppiano of Oko Lab, and was amazed how far incubation technology has come! In 2001, the best incubators I remember were homemade ones. Today, you can buy a stage top incubator, with magnetized connectors, micro-scale thermistor temp probes, humidity and co2 control, for prices around 1/3 of units in the past. As a machining junkie, I was very impressed with the finish of these units. If you are looking for an incubation solution you should definitely check them out.
Zeiss has an awesome Oculus Rift-equipped demonstration of interactive sample observation. I couldn’t believe it when I walked by, there was the rift, and no-one was sitting in the demo chair! Boom 🙂 I had to jump on that chance. As a tech nerd and gaming junkie, I’ve been relishing the chance to test these, and it was a super cool experience! At first it’s disjointed to turn and see the image field move with the accelerometer inputs on the rift. Navigation was performed using an XBOX 360 controller.
In only a few minutes I found my senses immersed in the environment, and was soon able to fly around with ease without even thinking about the control inputs required to do so. It really was like being in another environment. Excellent demonstration by Zeiss, and I’m happy to see that these types of technology are being adapted for use in biology.
Sutter Instrument Company had the new IPA Integrated Patch Amplifier system on display at the show. This system is a huge leap forward for cell physiologists. With a single system, you get a matched probe, amplifier, and digital capture device, all optimized for low noise and maximum sensitivity. Definitely a major step for whole cell analysis!
Open-Imaging had a booth as well, demonstrating the new Micro-Manager 2.0 open source microscopy platform. 
I’ve seen a lot of new (read unstable)Â software at shows like this, and was surprised at how smoothly things worked. It’s obvious that Chris and Mark have put lots of time into this version, to make sure there’s minimal chaos factor when end users upgrade. I was also able to spend some time talking with Mark, as we flew to the show together this year! I’m excited for the future of Open Imaging, and am looking forward to working with the new release!
I want to give a special thanks to Sutter and Open Imaging, who both allowed me to present my Triggerscope at the show. I hope you got a chance to see it!
My second observation is more a felt sense than a metric. Maybe it was the new product advancements, or my age, or who I spent tim with, but I felt a shift in generational control of the industry. During my early years in microscopy, there were a group of highly intelligent, capable and dedicated people who, in one form or another, directed the outcome of products and services in this industry. But now, a decade and a half has gone by, and I’ve realized that a new group of people are influencing that direction. While I may never get to place my personal mark on the industry, I know that I get to work near those who do.  To the people who led us here, I’d say thanks for working so hard to bring this industry such incredible capability. To those who now have the burden of keeping things new, I say bear this responsibly, not lightly. Our industry should be the hallmark of the highest ethical standards, have the strictest dedication to accuracy, and consistency. Our marketing should keep people captivated while only promising what we can deliver. We should price products fairly, and support them well. I hope we are up to the challenge, because it’s in our shoulders now.
Yet…..when I did get a chance to walk the show floor this year, I took heart. I can see that the future is bright 🙂
Austin
With ASCB right around the corner, I’ve been looking for opportunities to showcase the controller, so I’m happy and grateful to announce that the TriggerScope16 will be demonstrated at the Open-Imaging Micro-Manager booth (#1312) Â this year!
Here’s a short video I made showing the new display which will be at the booth. The display uses a NeopIxel (WS2812) strip, housed in a 1″ square extrusion, capped with a milled acrylic rod.
Over 450 years have seen the compound microscope evolve into an incredible instrument. From simple contrast viewing, we’ve moved to super resolution systems capable of sub-diffraction accuracy. But for all this advancement, we’ve been stuck with the architecture of the microscope platform. Over 70% of labs end up buying both inverted and upright microscopes….until today!
I’m happy to introduce the Revolve Hybrid Microscope! A scope that combines both inverted and upright observation into one instrument. I’ve worked in this industry for over a decade, and this is by far the biggest evolution in the idea of a scope I’ve ever seen! I’m so excited to share this with the research community, and I hope you’ll enjoy learning more about it!
The Concept
We all know that uprights and inverts use similar objectives, illuminators, position systems and cameras. Why duplicate all of these expensive components? Can’t we find a way to merge these two systems into one unified instrument? Echo Labs has done just that, with the Revolve.
As you can see above, this a completely new way of approaching what a microscope should be! The revolve is two microscopes in one. It provides a fully capable inverted research instrument, AND a fully capable upright microscope, into one device. So the revolve is 2x the microscope at 1x the price, size and maintenance. While the revolve brings so much more capability, it’s also less, in all the ways less can be good. You’ll note the lack of a tower computer. It’s gone! The integrated iPad drives everything inside the scope. No more rat’s nest of wires on your lab bench. Of course, with the iPad, training isn’t required for new users. Both my boys (6 & 7yrs old) got a chance to use the fluorescent side of the app, and were capturing multichannel fluorescence with a few seconds. Using the touchscreen is simple and an easy extension to the other controls on the scope, so the keyboard and mouse won’t be missed. You may also note a lack of wires. In normal marketing pictures microscope manufactures won’t connect all the boxes, so things “look clean”, but the revolve IS clean. Only 1 power wire is required for operation, and all of the other brightfield, and fluorescent components are placed inside the body of the scope! To see these functions live, Echo Labs has produced a great website which includes demonstration videos, at www.echo-labs.comÂ
The Revolve Microscope
Let’s get right to the specs. This is a compound, infinity-path microscope. Current glass selection includes the entire line of Olympus objectives, with everything from long working distance phase to high NA oil immersion lenses. Both a high NA and long working distance transmitted light condenser are available to support phase and brightfield. The instrument uses the Apple iPad for control, interface, storage and display of images. The body and chassis are designed to be compact, fitting inside a fume hood or a lab bench with shelving installed. A single power supply runs all internal components, so there is only a single power connection required, and aside from that, no other cables need to be connected.
Brightfield
In brightfield mode the iPad camera is optically coupled to the lightpath, providing sharp, color balanced, auto exposed images. Optical coupling is set to provide the full objective field within the iPad camera FOV, with pinch+zoom available should the user want a traditional square view. On-screen controls are provided for color balance, brightness and contrast.
Due to the unique nature of the upright/inverted combination, both high res close working condensers as well as long working distance phase condensers are available. A high accuracy locking mechanism is used to securely hold the condenser assembly in place, while still allowing for easy removal by a single lever.
Fluorescence
In fluorescent mode the Revolve uses a high sensitivity quantitative monochrome camera, which is wirelessly connected to the iPad display, providing a no-latency view when scanning a fluorescent plate or slide. High power discrete LED’s provide fluorescence excitation. Fluorescent wavelengths are specified by “light cube”, with a cube and filter block set provided for popular fluorescent excitation/emission spectra.
The user interface for fluorescence includes enough control to be useful, but avoids the excessive detail usually found on older imaging programs. You won’t have to worry about parallel shift voltage settings, or pre/post sensor clearing options just to snap an image! On-image display scaling, a simple high/low gain selection, and attenuation control are easily controlled. The physical knob on the right side of the microscope controls the current fluorescent channel in parallel with the app, providing a bidirectional link for the user’s preferred mode of operation.
Mechanical
The body includes a USB hub which can accept common memory sticks, allowing for quick USB transfer of images obtained by the iPad app. The engineers spent an extensive amount of time working on the question of “what do we do with the images on the iPad?”. This is an important question for every microscope, yet it never seems to be completely addressed. How many times have you realized images you captured simply were lost, because someone deleted them from your scope’s hard drive! With the Revolve you can save your images almost anywhere: USB, AirDrop, DropBox, with more cloud options coming soon. Or, just take your iPad….and walk away!
The focus mechanism is duplicated for easy access in either upright or inverted configuration, providing a common coarse/fine knob adjustment. X/Y adjustment is provided by dual knob control placed close to the user’s hand. The stage is locked into the microscope with a secure, but easily removable cam lock and alignment pins. This makes removal of the stage easy for revolving the scope, but keeps the stage securely in place when in use. Check out this video for an example of each of the above functions!
Conclusion
During my time working with the Echo Labs team, I’ve seen the attention to detail put into the user-focused features of this microscope. My previous posts have hopefully allowed a sense of understanding as to why I am so excited to work with this team! This company is a completely new approach to an old industry. The management team consists of veterans in the microscopy industry with a passion for high end imaging. The engineers are an amazing cadre with broad experience in the music, medical, defense, and research industries. Watching this team put the combined skill and experience into this microscope has been simply incredible. I hope you get a chance to experience using this microscope, as you’ll never look at scopes the same way again! Of course, in keeping with the idea of a new-generation company, you don’t need to talk with anyone just to check out pricing, an online and interactive quote configurator is available, which allows you to easily build the revolve for your work.
I believe Echo labs is well on the way to completely changing the microscopy industry. The Revolve is only the first step in bringing easy to use, fair price research instruments into the lab. Welcome to the Revolution.
-Austin Blanco
Well,
I guess I should continue providing lengthy explanations of this skunk works project, but I think it’s time to let this thing stand on it’s own merit. So…here’s a nifty countdown timer until the announcement goes up!
I was supposed to write about bigger/faster/stronger today, but I don’t want to. Instead I want to consider culture. Companies absolutely have cultures, or rather, micro-cultures. Labs have cultures as well! One can consider in many ways a lab to be a small business operating inside the incubator of a university! So how does a culture affect what products and services are offered by a company? Well, take for example the typical order lag from when you say, “I want to buy a new eyepiece” or some other part, and when you actually receive that part. For most major scope companies, this is around 4-9 weeks. Yes…. WEEKS.
Is that wrong? Well…that depends on what your company culture values. If it values maximum profit potential for in-stock supplies over turnaround times, then no, it’s not wrong. In my mind, if I have customers that need parts, and it’s regularly taking a month to receive supplies, I’m a lot less concerned with the part itself and a lot more concerned with customer satisfaction, so to me, I don’t think it’s the best customer-service philosophy. In any case, this is a question of culture – what values are prioritized inside of a company? Those values drive the culture. Is shaking up things seen as productive, or divisive? This is a cultural trait of a company. Companies like Tesla or Apple have to maintain a fanatical obsession with experimentation, with risk taking, in order to avoid becoming just another big widget maker, and truth be told, over some length of time, they will likely not be able to avoid this change. It’s almost inevitable.
So – what sort of company do you want to work with? What values should be important to a new company offering products in the microscopy industry? Should delivery times run in the months, or the days? Should service require checklists, or a ups label? Just an interesting thing to consider….
-Austin
Every so often I will get the chance to cook up some code for one of the usual software scope control packages. But these days, I spend most of my time in programs like Fusion360, Fritzing, and the like. So I guess this is how I feel when using the typical scope control software. How about you?
I’ve used Elements, imagePro, MetaMorph, for years. It’s all good software. It’s powerful, and can do all sorts of crazy things that are super awesome. But what if I just want to obtain a 3 channel fluorescent image? Here’s what I end up looking at for a simple capture.
But this must be only one program, right? Surely other more capable systems have a current style of user interface, right? Here’s an example of the most capable (and IMHO fastest) software around, the venerable MetaMorph.
For the typical person who just wants to snap an image, this is overkill. Now – I don’t intend to bash on these great software applications. For multi-dimensional timelapse, or other advanced work, there are few better tools available, and these do a great job of providing any feature one could want. But what percentage of labs have such complicated instruments, vs. the great number of simple, multichannel fluorescent 
microscopes around in every biology facility? How can it be that all these users must learn these behemoth software packages to capture some cultures? Other industries seem to have moved to workflow-based designs. You can find apps that perform full MIDI mixing on a tablet, heck, even airplanes have touchscreen controls now! Â Yet the microscopy industry seems to be locked into a slightly improved version of windows XP button mashup.
With all of the consumer products finding ways of simplifying control over hardware, isn’t there another way of doing this?
Good software design can perform a specified job, and provide users the controls they need to do that job, but excellent software does so without requiring any training. An example of this can be found below, showing a unified interface for shuttering, attenuation and capture. This is a very limited example of what’s coming up, but just from this clip I think the differences in design philosophy are evident.
I think Scotty wasn’t annoyed at the keyboard because he had to use it. He was annoyed because of what it represented: A barrier to getting his work done. Microscope time isn’t free time. There’s a lot of other, far more important work to be done than collecting the results of actual research. Cumbersome software results in less time to do the important stuff.
Complex software will always be required for highly complex jobs, but for everyone else, I’m happy to say that the days of “software training” will soon be behind us. My guess is that most people will have a hard time going back to click and hunt, after using the next generation of control software. I know my perspective has changed. I guess that’s why these days, when I sit down behind a button-crowded screen, all I can think of is Scotty cracking his fingers 🙂
-Austin
What can’t your microscope do?
Any user of a modern scope, or at least, a high end scope, considers the addition of new widgets. Whether it’s a better illuminator, adding a more sensitive camera, or even a motorized component, we think of scope upgrades,as…well…UP grades, yes? But in so many other areas of our lives, we’ve seen that less can really be more. How many of us still have a cable TV service, and a landline, and a fax line, and a fiber connection for internet? We’ve reduced all of these different services to a simpler and easier choice – wired of some type (Cable, fiber or whatnot) for high bandwidth, and wireless (cellular etc) for low bandwidth. I’d expect we’ll soon see the end of wired connections at all…. One could imagine the new apartment renter only 15 years ago, asking the question, “how many phone / fax lines do I need?” yet now, we find our less is better, is more. Less power consumption is better, yet 30 years ago every ad wasn’t about efficiency, it was about POWER. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing that stirs my soul like the sound of a Hellcat at the reno air races, pushing 500MPH and screaming out the gutteral sound of 2,000 horsepower only a few hundred feet away. Power is cool. But hey, I drive a hybrid. In many practical ways, less is more. It’s with this in mind that I ask, do you NEED that 30lb computer, sitting next to your scope? What if it wasn’t there? What could you do differently with your scope if, say, it was smaller, or lighter? What could you do with your scope if those boxes and wires hanging everywhere were….less?
Sometimes we don’t see the power in less. I love wrenching on scopes that, by all rights, may blow a breaker were everything fired up at the same time. I love the complexity, but I’m, for lack of a better term, an imaging gearhead. I love working on laser launches BECAUSE they might burn my fingers! If they can’t, it’s just not as cool for some reason. But at the end of things, I’m just a gearhead. Research is what matters, not my personal desire to melt fiber. Today more then ever we are presented with the challenge of better understanding our world, our environment, our universe, through basic research. We need affordable tools. We need tools that are easy to obtain, easy to use, easy to service. Tools that can be used for what they are. The research is the objective, but so many microscopy companies have fallen into the mistaken belief that the device they sell is the objective itself. A microscope is nothing more than 450 years of technological advancement beyond the hammer, but……it’s still a tool.
What if the tools you had in the lab weren’t aimed at being the most complex, all encompassing widget around, but instead were aimed at being useful for the intended purpose? Would less complexity equal more speed?
What if your microscope wan’t intended to have every cool new thing added to it? What if it were just made to have cool stuff, useful stuff, already inside? Would less wiring and add-on components equal more useable bench space? Or more potential places you could put the thing?
What if the scope you wanted to buy didn’t come with a 4 page list of crypto-part numbers, providing your sales rep, and you, an excellent way to miss detailed little parts on the system, only to figure that out when you receive the thing? Would less itemization result in more assurance in a simple, complete system?
What if you didn’t have to earn a dual Ph.D in computer science just to run esoteric software with a few hundred unintelligible icons scattered all over the place? Would less buttons equal more sanity?
You know, most of these questions aren’t new ones. There will always be gearheads who want a water cooled 220V laser simply because it needs water cooling, but in so many ways, the current microscope options available are built FOR the gearhead, and then reduced and passed to the regular researcher who just wants the tool to work.
I’ll always be a gearhead, but I’ve come to realize how powerful less can be, and it’s pretty freaking powerful….
4 Days and counting.
Austin
The foundational design of the compound microscope has, in many ways, remained locked in place for the 450 years of it’s existence. Combining an objective, eyepiece, and illuminator to provide a magnified view of a specimen has drastically improved. The illumination, staging, detection, optical design, and contrast methods have all evolved by leaps and bounds today. Super resolution will likely become the new normal in the next 10 years. But for all of this improvement, some of the basic limitations of the microscope remain locked in place. A further limitation is placed on development by the same names in the industry. Big name instrument manufacturers, with entrenched, slow, and top-heavy R&D divisions aren’t really set up to upset things, but instead to make small improvements over time. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes, a new way of seeing things, a new generation of builders, to break free of this incremental development cycle, to find a different way of solving the age old limitations we find in todays’ instruments.
Over the past year, I’ve been privileged to find an amazing group of young entrepreneurs, who have tirelessly worked to bring a new microscope to life. I’ve been even more honored to play a small part along the way. I’ve been chomping at the bit to share the story of this group. I’ve watched as they struggled to solve extremely difficult problems. I’ve looked into eyes not seen since I was a young grunt in the infantry, the eyes of a man who hasn’t slept in days, fighting to figure out the answer to a seemingly unanswerable question. I’ve watched as we walked through success, through failure, through disappointment, watching as one man’s imagination was brought into reality, watching as each person contributed to make something bigger, better, than any of us could imagine.
On August 1, the company will announce it’s product, and I’ll be able to tell more of the story. For today, I just want to ask a series of questions, which I plan to further explore in the days leading up to release.
I hope you’ll stay with me for the week. All I can promise is that will be worth the wait. I hope to at least provide an explanation on why I believe this group is on the right track, and why it’ll turn the microscopy industry on it’s head…..literally.
-Austin
After all of the engineering and testing which goes into a microscope, you’d imagine that any manufactured scope would have perfect alignment of the optics. Believe it or not, in many cases things can be off! So how can you tell this? A simple test is to view a bead slide, or a grid slide, and run the focus up and down through the sample’s best focal plane. What you should see is clear defocused rings or bars which expand away from the object as you drive away from either side of the focal plane.
Running through the focus quickly will reveal astigmatism:
In either case this is a limitation to the amount of clarity your optics can resolve and should be addressed.
You can further isolate the issue by switching objectives and running the test again.
-Austin
IamgingIm