2014-04-02 00.23.11

Complete with stage-drive and focus – this little contraption allows to hold a standard histology sample over

a Raspberry-Pi camera fitted with a simple acrylic lens. Magnification is about x100, and shown in the picture is the hippocampus of a rat brain-slice. Building costs are less than 50$ (plus a screen), the bulk of which is the RPi and camera itself (~30-40$). Of course, the RPi can on top of that be used as a computer, running open Office and analysis softwaressuch as LibreOffice, ImageJ, GNU-R or Octave. So, in a nutshell, this could be, at least in principle, sufficient to do some meaningful science – and it will certainly suffice for many forms of classroom teaching. For more details, see the thingyverse link here and a general blurp about our efforts to push Open Source efforts here.