Hi All,
When I saw the road test for the new Cypress Semiconductor PSOC 4 board, I was inspired to build a Spectral Illuminator for microscopes.
To answer the first question, why the PSOC 4 board.
Well, when I first saw the Programmable System On a Chip (PSOC) product line, I did a detailed analysis and called it the "Engineers Magic Wand!" My report is somewhere here on Element 14.
What I like about the PSOC product is its sheer versatility to support evolving projects like mine.
Not only do you get a powerful MCU, but the board supports current and legacy hardware interfaces including TTL and CMOS.
Plus you get programmable digital and analog hardware devices on the chip itself.
Essentially you get an entire hardware experimental laboratory on one board.
You can have hardware circuits that run independently of the software or you can embed lots of hardware monitoring registers using the programmable features of the kit.
Cypress provides you with a very good IDE with a wealth of detailed information at the touch of a button.
They also provide a very nice library of hardware devices that the board supports.
You just select, drop, and wire them up. All of the details are done for you and Cypress even provides starting software functions to initialize and adjust the hardware parameters.
So if you have not looked at the PSOC 4 line, do so, you too will be amazed at the capabilities you get for just 25 USD.
Now some technical stuff.
WARNING #1, I will be using some advanced technical ideas and terms in this blog. Please go google them as most have excellent explanations already online.
WARNING #2, I will be introducing you to some very advanced scientific ideas that have yet to be accepted by the science community world wide. Many of these ideas come from my book "I Killed Schrodinger's Cat!" and come from my own analysis and engineering solutions to detailed subatomic physics. Do not worry if you do catch on at first, I have taken an entirely new view at solutions to physics, chemistry and biology. I will be sprinkling ideas and possible applications along the way.
Now if you have any children who want an A for a science fair project at school, have them follow these blogs. The field of spectral microscopy is still in its infancy and even teenage students can find new and exciting science with the simple ideas I will be presenting here. Plus it will put their teachers on the defensive as the students will have stepped a couple of light years ahead of their teacher's knowledge.
What is a Spectral Illuminator?
As the name implies, it is a light source that enables you to provide specific spectra of light (colors) when viewing subjects with a microscope.
Traditionally, microscopes have just used "white" light" when viewing subjects relying on image intensity or contrast to identify interesting structure within the subject.
White light has two major problems, one is that many light sources put out different spectral content, which can cause subtle artifacts in the image.
Second, due to the broad spectrum of light, subjects are usually stained with a material which creates artificial contrast of the structures within the subject.
Why Spectral?
The science of Spectroscopy has been revealing a wealth of hidden information in all areas of science. Geologists were some of the first people to realize that you can differentiate different chemical compounds just by looking at the reflected spectra they have.
By controlling the spectral illumination of materials, you can see very specific response depending upon how the material reflects, passes or absorbs specific spectral wavelengths.
NEW IDEA!
I have also recently realized that there is yet another aspect to specific spectral illumination.
When a photon is absorbed by the electron cloud of an atom, the electron cloud has to rebalance mass and energy around the atomic nucleus. During this process, photons of different spectra may be emitted by these atoms. (Yes you should be astonished at this point. These emission changes have been known, but under exploited for a number of decades. It has sometimes been referred to as luminescence, but I have found that the implications go much deeper than anyone previously realized.)
So What is the Big Deal?
Well, by carefully controlling the spectral illumination, you can identify many subtle structures within your subject that have not been seen before. Yes, you could well be the first person to see new things inside cells with a microscope.
The big benefit to spectral illumination is that you no longer need to "stain" your subject. This change removes possible subject contamination from the staining material, so you preserve more of the real science within your subject.
So the initial requirements for my spectral illuminator will be RGB light emitting diodes (LED). There are limitations about using standard RGB LED's, but that is part of the issues that I want to explore during my testing.
I will also need to use an RGB sensor. You can probably use a webcam for this, but I have some special cameras that I want to use first.
I need to select specific spectra, that means I want to carefully control the RGB values that are used to illuminate the subject from below. (Yes I will be doing the same thing from above, but that is a different post.)
I need to run through a set of specific RGB values while taking images at each step. Yes this means a lot of data, but there will be a wealth of information unlocked by taking this much data.
I think that is enough for now.
I will get some pictures and illustrations later, but I warn you I am graphically challenged, so don't get your hopes up.
I will answer questions below, please be as specific as you can be and make sure you google first.
Keep tuned, this project can have great implications for your future careers.
DAB
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dougw
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