@stevie awards a barnstar to partsandcrafts for their awesome contribution!

This is great! Love the photos. Was thinking if there was a cheap product we could substitute for the LED and battery pack, to save a few steps, but not really sure if it's worth it. I saw these for ~$4.60 on Amazon, which is a bit pricey I guess:

https://www.amazon.com/I-MU-Flexible-Gooseneck-Brightness-Gray-White/dp/B071Y3P8ZC/

But maybe if we make a kit, we could bulk order them.

Having the point source seems pretty important -- however, it seems possible to do a micro LED copper tape coin battery solution, which would bring the price down a bit.

Oh, is it important that the light be a point, and not multiple point, or a diffuse source?

We tried it with a bunch of different light sources, including a diffuse multi-LED source (book light). The best source was a single LED at close range pointed straight into the lens.

@warren @kgradow1 -- it's true that we did try a bunch of different lights, and the best we found was a single LED. But the main reason this was true, I think, is that it was really obvious where the light was coming from so we could easily point it through the slide and into the lens.

I think any light that's sufficiently bright and even is fine. The trick is that most of the cheap lights I've been able to find are made up of a bunch of LEDs so they don't actually light evenly, even with a diffuser, so it's hard to point them correctly. But I think it would be possible to find a good off-the-shelf light, but it would involve some research and trial and error.

This is awesome. maybe we should build out a part of the Q&A specifically about lighting. @maxliboiron has mentioned lighting can be a challenge and varies depending on the type of work you're doing.

@warren @kgradow1 -- we also tried using one of these lights -- https://www.amazon.com/Cat-CT1000-Pocket-COB-Light/dp/B012BR6D1E/ -- and found that it was too bright, though now that I think about it I didn't look very hard at camera settings to see if manual white-balancing or other settings would fix the problem.

If we did enough experimentation to feel confident on there being an optimal light placement we could add some kind of LED holder to the design like the openflexure microscope has, but I'm not confident that there even is an ideal general placement, let alone what it is, which is why something adjustable seems nice.

Awesome. Trying to get a bunch of the parts and prices together here: https://publiclab.org/questions/warren/12-08-2017/how-cheaply-can-i-get-all-the-parts-of-the-basic-microscope-kit

@warren I just got and tried using that light you suggested: https://www.amazon.com/I-MU-Flexible-Gooseneck-Brightness-Gray-White/dp/B071Y3P8ZC/

It seems to work well! I didn't have the "on the go" USB mini to female adapter to connect it to the raspberry pi, so I had to use the computer, but it seems to light pretty well.

My camera sensor has gotten really scratched from too many take-aparts and too much careless travel, but the rest of the image looks great.

I also got one of these gooseneck cell phone holders https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HDZJ1ZE/ref=sspa_dk_detail_2?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B01HDZJ1ZE&pd_rd_wg=6yw83&pd_rd_r=19T8CJ0623H0PWP5DVYS&pd_rd_w=Pu5FI

Primarily for taking photographs for documentation, but it also works pretty well as a holder for using my phone's flashlight as an illumination source.

@warren @kgradow I've also been experimenting with using a magnet sandwich to hold the carriage bolt in place, like so. It seems helpful. Though I've also found that it can sometimes be just as good or better to focus by screwing/unscrewing the lens.

Ooh! Cross post at https://publiclab.org/questions/stevie/01-22-2018/what-is-the-best-light-source-to-use-for-the-basic-microscope -- awesome!