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Hi <<First Name>>,
This is our periodic newsletter of news, tips, and advice about making images with incredible detail, all in focus, all the time.
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Image of the Month
In the last month we have been posting many images that are not insects, primarily to respond to questions such as "Does the Magnify2 only do bugs?" Of course the answer is that you can, and our customers do, image almost anything. We showed the versatility off at MakerFaire where we had a backdrop of 8 different images produced on our systems. The images are (left to right) a burger patty, oil shale, butterfly wing, 2 dollar bill, Exploratorium settling plate (with live marine animals), bee hive frame, Eucalyptus leaf, grains, snail eating beetle and a fossilized fish. You can see them all in the booth image, below:
and you can also see the GIGAmacro of the Arduino board on the right of the booth. How's that for versatility?
More next month!
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MakerFaire. Wow, just WOW!
A huge event for us and a chance to meet friends old and new. Our booth was in a great location and looked fabulous:
We had crowds around us most of the time and had to shoo people out at 8PM Saturday night in order to go home! We are overwhelmed with the positive comments and feedback on the Magnify2, but also about the GIGAmacro Viewer. We had a large screen system that had the new viewer running, with image selection, zooming and panning driven by a game controller. Everyone "got it" and picked it up and just used it. Gene's two children loved it, and the youngest - 18 months old - happily scrolled around images. I thought this was just a fluke, maybe he had inherited his parent's smarts, but later in the day another 18 month old did the same thing. We also had huge interest from teachers, a number of whom asked about a standalone version for teaching. We are looking at that and will probably produce such a version after work on the viewer is completed later this year.
We were also interviewed by TESTED.com (Jamie and Adam of Mythbusters fame) and they posted the video on YouTube. We were swamped and as of 7 days later, the video has over 35,000 views and over 1,000 likes. Similarly, the web traffic on our site exploded! Thanks to all for the many, many comments - even the comedic ones - keep them coming.
We love the feedback and we take it very seriously, please do let us know your thoughts and needs.
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Making it Real
I often look at technical articles and think 'Yup, that makes sense". Then when I try it out, or think some more, there are so often complexities that didn't strike me at first. I find the whole 3D space to be like that - it looks great in theory, but try and make some of this stuff work and the road is far from smooth.
Gene wrote an article recently on using the Magnify2 to produce 3D depth data.
It didn't become real till I saw the results of this paper in a form I could hold. We produced this for MakerFaire:
It's the result of applying the process Gene wrote about: we took a part of the depthmap of the penny and converted it so that we could run the mill in our workshop to produce the above. It's high-density urethane foam milled with the depth information from a small part of the penny. It was fun to see how many could identify Lincoln's nose from the 9" square I gave them. You can see the difference in size; that's the penny bottom right.
How could YOU use the output form the Magnify2 to make something real? Let us know!
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New Documentation for You
Behind the scenes we have been working hard to update the documentation set for our systems. The Setup and Install is machine specific (the Magnify2 is different to all that went before), but the Operations and Workflow guide is useful for all systems and users. You can view the Guide at the link above and if you want your own pdf copy, send me an email.
We will be producing new Guides for each part of the system, and we'd appreciate any feedback on the existing Guides or on gaps that you notice or bug you.
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GIGAmacro Viewer
We talked last month about a "Hangout" to talk about the requirements for the GIGAmacro Viewer. The "steering group" will meet for the first time via a Google Hangout to identify and refine needs, use cases and provide feedback on pre-release implementations. The date is Tuesday June 17th, at 12 noon PDT.
If you can contribute to that (about an hour a month for the Hangout and an hour in pre/post) we'd love to hear from you. Mail us for details and to be included.
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That's it for this month. We are loving the feedback (more please!!!) and a big "thanks" to all of you who have already joined us on social media. We are really appreciative of the shoutouts you have given us. Thanks again, and keep telling the world, and your friends, about GIGAmacro.
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