Microscope!
I recently purchased a stereo microscope from eBay seller bargainmicroscopes, part of a web of similar and confusing Chinese-microscope-selling websites:
- bargainmicroscopes.com
- boommicroscopes.com
- boommountedmicroscopes.com
- embryotransplantmicroscopes.com
- emicroscopes.com
- entmicroscopes.com
- epifluorescencemicroscopes.com
- fetalmonitors.biz
- forensicmicroscopes.com
- highpowermicroscopes.com
- hospitalequipmentdepot.com
- livebloodlabs.com
- lowpowermicroscopes.com
- microscopemotorizedstage.com
- microscopeparts.biz
- microscopeuniverse.com
- microscopesupply.com
- oremicroscopes.com
- phasecontrastmicroscopes.com
- polarizingmicroscopes.com
- projectionmicroscopes.com
- specialtymicroscopes.com
- teachingmicroscopes.com
- tissueculturemicroscopes.com
- truevisionmicroscopes.com
- toolmakersmicroscopes.com
- usbmicroscopes.com
- veterinarymicroscopes.com
- videoinspectionmicroscopes.com
- wholesalemicroscopes.com
All these pages lack any kind of contract information beyond a phone number and email address. A little research found that they are all run by one Zane Goehman at 6321 Winona Ave in St Louis. This appears to be a home business (not that there’s anything wrong with that) with the actual order fulfillment outsourced to another St Louis company. By coincidence, this address is only a few blocks from Will’s dentist, so I’ve visited this neighborhood approximately monthly for the past year.
The multiple-pseudonymous-website thing is a bit of shady Google-baiting, but I had no problems with the service. The microscope shipped two days after I ordered it and arrived quickly in the factory Styrofoam packing.
I’m fairly pleased with the microscope itself. I bought it to examine film and solder small parts without eyestrain, and it should serve that purpose well. I used a similar one when I worked for Maxon America. The one I got is titled “20x-40x-80x BINOCULAR STEREO LOW POWER MICROSCOPE + CAM”. 20x is about right for soldering small parts. I wish I would have gotten a 10x-20x one now. I suppose new eyepieces could fix that.
The camera came with a USB camera which can replace an eyepiece.
The camera enumerates as “093a:2468 Pixart Imaging, Inc. Easy Snap Snake Eye WebCam” and works perfectly out of the box with Ubuntu Linux. But the image quality is disappointing. Also, the magnification is much too high. I fired up cheese and took this picture of an 0603 resistor on a PICkit 2:
(The view through the eyepieces looks much better than this.)
Andre said,
August 22, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hi Mark
I was looking for your contact details - I’d like to suggest you add a link to your e-mail address from your home page.
I saw on http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/GadgetLabs that you wrote an alsa driver for your gadgetlabs soundcard. I’m looking for alsa support for my wave824. I checked your software link, didnt see anything there.
Can you please help me?
Thanks,
Andre
Isabel Rios said,
September 20, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Hi
I´m from Portugal and I´m interested in one microscope at live blood labs, but I need to talk with someone who got it from them. Can we trust them? For me it´s a lot of money and I can´t afford to lose it. ARe they reliable?
Thanks
ISabel