721 Spectrophotometer tear down

There will be more projects relating the to 721 Spectrophotometer but I thought I would start this little series with a basic tear down of the machine.

So the machine came in a very nice box, very well packaged and for the price I paid, it's higher quality than I originally expected.

The tear down started by unscrewing the sample holder rod then removing the wavelength knob and the 2 bolts on both sides. From here the white plastic top simply lifts off.

Overall simple design most of the left area is taken up by the lamp and the defraction gradient which unfortunately couldn't be accesed without me possibly damaging other parts. From here you can spin the wheel on the left side to modify the wavelength being used. On the right side you mostly have the sample chamber which is built to hold 4 separate samples and the detector.

I'm thinking of modifying the sample holder or at the very least 3d printing some adapters for some light fun.

Two separate circuit boards were inside the case, one to power the lamp and the other to control the screen.

The circuit that controls the screen really got my attention , I would like to see if I could do something with this "ISP" connection. Haven't identified any of the chips yet but getting a data port in here would be nice.

So there will be more projects on modifying the spectrophotometer later on but I hope you enjoyed the basic tear down.

Funaria hygrometrica pot

Been collecting plants for years and have been a fan of moss all my life.  It's a simplistic plant and after all these years I'm going to try to keep it in an indoor pot. Luckily living in the county side has given the ability to source my own moss. I filled the bottom with high quality dirt and compressed it pretty hard. So I just went outside one evening and started to fill a small indoor glass pot with cord moss. 

I give it a light spraying ever day to keep it moist and so far its doing pretty well. 

Also I think the pot is beautiful , I was given a load of old milk glass and am slowly going through it.

Custom Vivarium Lamp

So you probably already read my Vivarium build well as much as I love the Vivarium,  I would like to provide it better lighting and have it near my chair. So here we go , I started this build by drawing a simple pixel art of what I wanted (I just like doing it for all my projects).

The main parts of the project are as follows:

• Two round modules for mounting the LED strips

• Oak base

•Led strips

•Mount to hold the metal square tube 

•Cap

The round modules are probably the most complex part of the build mostly because you have to take into account for the leds strips, wiring and attaching it to the 19mm square tube. Took me two tries to get it just right but in the end it worked out beautifully. All the CAD work was done tinkercad. 

 

Originally I was going to cut a hole into the oak to hold the 19mm square tube but I decided to go the easier route and just 3d print a holder for it.

(At this point I simply need to drill a few holes and wire the led strips)

I didn't think it was going to be to bright but turned out I was wrong. So I built a simple shade to cover the brightest parts of the light. The leds get slightly warm which provide heat to the terrariumm

Vivaruim build

I've had a terrarium for years and it all started from one of those Venus fly traps you buy from Walmart in the summer.  The venous fly trap eventually died but I decided to keep the hard plastic container to see if anything else would come to life.  And with a little patients it eventually did the peat moss around the Venus fly trap sprung to life and took over the container but let's fast forward about 15 years.  The plastic container started to die due to sun exposure so I decided to swap the container for a large pickle jar.  I decided to remove 90% of the peat moss due to it having negative effects on growth.  I also increased the water level by 30% making the original soil extremely moist.

I brought in several different species of moss and lichen and plants to create more competition for the peat moss. Also added a piece of tree bark to add dry surface and soil coverage.

•peat moss

•small unknown plants (waiting for more growth)

•reindeer lichen

•Tree Bark (Male Persimmon) 

To keep the moss and lichen from over taking the new container I decided to add some isopods and snails. I wanted this to be a self-regulated biosphere. I know isopods like both a dry and wet area so I decided to design a small hideaway for them to explore during the day. 

The structure was 3d printed with grey PLA at 100% infill to stop any possible warping by heat. Long term hope is that the the mosses eventually over take the structures roof allowing it to blend in with the rest of the terrarium. One end of the hideaway is open and the other is closed with a piece of rock moss and reindeer lichen. Some small rocks were added for other areas to hide and explore. The hope is that the moss takes up most of the open soil,  I believe this will eliminate or decrease the amount of sitting water.

I will update periodically with updated photos of the growth and life I discover in the Vivarium. If you enjoyed this reading check out my custom lighting I built for it.

Laser Mount for Telescope

A few years ago while walking around Good Will I found a cheap telescope . It wasn't anything fancy just a 15-20 year old refracter,  they only wanted $5 for it so I picked it up.

It sat in the closet for a while,  it needed alot of TLC. All the bolts needed to be replaced and everything was simply to loose. There was to much play to make it a useful scope. Luckily all the new bolts and washers removed all this slack.

 

Unfortunately someone probably years ago removed the "finder scope". Which make it easier to align up to the object you want to examine. To solve this issue I decided to mount a semi high powered laser I had laying around.

Originally I decided I was going to attach it using velcro straps but I eventually mounted it using adhesive.

I didnt expect it to be perfectly aligned, it was pretty obvious even a small angle difference would effect the alignment of the scope and the laser.

If it got me close to the location of the object I was trying to view , I would consider the project a success.

Overall I consider the project a success.

Fecal Examination Microscope Slide

Quick project 

A few months ago I had a friend approach me about the idea of examining the fecal matter of a goat to see if the goat had worms by looking for eggs. After some research I found out they do manufacture such a slide, but I thought they were a tad expensive. The design is relatively simple with it mostly being a counting square in the center wedged between two slides.

I took a microscope slide and as close as possibly engraved a counting square in the center of the slide. After it was done to make it more visible I filled the engraving with blue ink.

To to create a space in between the two slides I simply broke the a slide into multiple pieces and sanded to the needed size.

A small drop of adhesive holds the two pieces in place. Decided to add an 3d printed casing to the ends to hide all my ugly glueing.

This slide probably won't work as well the official version but if it works well enough for me to count eggs then it did its job well.

Thanks for reading 

Simple Camera Fiber Optic interface (Hardware)

I wanted to build a simple interface for viewing the light coming through a fiber cable. This project is part of a larger project involving modifying a spectrophotometer which is a work in progress. But this post is just about designing and building a custom rig for grabbing the light from fiber. Now I'm only interested at the moment in the visible spectrum so this didn't have to really complicated. I essentially wanted to use an off the shelf webcam to view the light. Luckily a company I worked for years ago gave me some webcams so this part was easy.

I ended up using a Genius 120 degree webcam because it was the easiest to build case around and the focus method was very well built. Choosing this webcam really wasn't a great idea in the end because turns out its a pretty expensive webcam with a new one coming to about $150 and used being about $50. Which meant if I broke something I pretty much had to design a new case but ohh well. Either way the webcam fit well into the case that I designed in Sketchup

I built a wire holder into the case and even went ahead and filled the hole with epoxy because I'm not really a big fan of self destructive projects.

The lid ended up being an odd shape because I started trimming down on where the plastic needed to be and these trimmings also cut like 2 hours off the print time. 

The main area where the fiber optic cable inserted had to about 11 mm thick to get the end of the fiber directly above the lens. 

On the inside of the lid I did add small area above the lens because the lens extended above the case by about .5mm. Not a big deal I just wanted to be safe. 

At this point of the build I hadn't realized that centering the two bolts was a bad idea (dumb mistake). Obviously when the two bolts are inserted the box won't be able to sit on a table evenly. It will constantly rock back and forth. I should have made it 4 bolts and put one on each corner or another option would could have been designing the lid to insert into the box. My solution to this problem was to print an attachment for the bottom adding legs to the design. I grabbed my cheap desktop laser and cut out some soft feet.

The next part of this project is to write some code to take the data from the webcam and pinpoint it to a specific wavelength but that's still a work in progress.  Here is a video of the output from the camera Fiber optic line

Thanks for reading 

UPDATE AUGUST 14

Still working on the software but also had redesign the lid. The orginal version required you too slightly modify the optical cable which just seemed like the wrong direction if your 3D printing the project.  I also wanted to give the camera a little more clearing room under the lid so I expanded the the design upward by about 2mm.

Decided to go ahead and remove the IR filter on the camera. At first it seemed a little to risky but the idea of being able to see a little more of the spectrum really pushed me over the edge. My biggest worry was scratching some of the lower layers but didn't seem to be an issue.  I do think a might have lost some of the  focus but I think it was worth it.