USB Microscope

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I couldn't resist another play with the USB  Microscope this morning. Here's the result - a Bank of England £20 note at 200x magnification.

The detail is amazing.

Maplin currently offer this at £39.99 but from time to time it's been on offer for about half that, and at the lower price it is fantastic value. There are warnings among the reviews about Windows drivers, but I've used the microscope with Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit, and I'm currently using it with Ubuntu Lucid.

The only gotcha seems to be that cheese (the standard Linux webcam software) does not recognise the device if the microscope is plugged in at boot time, but it's fine if you connect it later.

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