Driven By Curiosity

I finally figured out that some issues I was having with building software for my ATmega165’s had to do with my cruddy hack to get avr-gcc to compile for them without warnings. I made it so that instead of using ‘-mmcu=atmega165′ I used ‘-mmcu=avr5 -D__AVR_ATmega165__’ when compiling. It works — up to a point. For me that point was reached when I started modularizing my code and trying to turn it into a real project instead of just lame test code.
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In setting up my lab, I knew that I would need a decent microscope. In the past, I’ve worked with a trinocular microscope which gave us 2.5x to 22.5x magnification, had a fiber optic ring light, boom arm and 12″x18″ stainless steel stage. Pretty nice setup. As those run upwards of $700, it was obvious it wouldn’t be in the budget.

Paul suggested that we look around on eBay and see what was there. There is actually quite an assortment, from hobby-type microscopes to good lab equipment. I finally decided on a binocular model which had a 1x/3x objective lens (which you turn to select the magnification). It came with both 5x and 10x eyepieces. I’ve been using it with the 5x eyepieces and it’s been great for me. I think the buy-it-now price was $189 or something, plus another $30 or so by the time it was all said and done.
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