For the regular consumers, smartphones exist to bring together devices into a single handset. With its impressive photographic prowess delivering the best snapshots despite its ultra compact form factor, smartphones today have certainly been essentials in the world today. For the scientific community however, smartphones are now being recognized with its vast room for potential, giving way for more revolutionary devices for its size. A clear example of this is the µPeek, a credit card-sized microscope that is capable of streaming a live view of microscopic organisms straight to a user's mobile device.
The µPeek is a sleek and compact gadget that allows users to perform microscopy through their smartphones similar to how they apply their innate artistic ways in photography. The µPeek is the very first smartphone microscope that features the capabilities of a fully pledged microscope with impressive design, an ultra-compact form factor the size of a credit card, and a user-friendly operation through the app available for iOS and Android devices.
The µPeek can deliver up to 30x - 300x magnification when it is combined with a smartphone, depending on the device used as well as the chosen zoom factor. Thanks to its high-quality optics, the images remain undistorted and sharp across the whole range of its magnification. As far as the imaging performance goes, the µPeek can deliver close image quality of a professional microscope. Although it comes with a comparable resolution power, it can also offer larger field of view.
The µPeek wants to democratize microscopy by being the first platform to do so. It will come at an affordable price tag as compared to conventional microscopes that features the same functions. To put it into perspective, The µPeek can easily equip a classroom at just the cost of a single microscope, thereby offering more savings to schools and laboratories.
As of this time, the µPeek has already surpassed its Kickstarter goal of Fr 125,000 with Fr 161,714 of total pledges.
