

50-Cent Microscope That Folds Like Origami [video] - aditya_samaddar
https://engineering.stanford.edu/research-profile/manu-prakashs-50-cent-microscope-folds-origami

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kken
In general, I believe the premise of this is a bit off. You often see that
people from the west try to design "low-cost" devices for developing countries
by introducing paradigm-shifting changes to the design. But this rarely seems
to succeed. Just think of all the low cost computing device projects for
Africa and India.

What won out in the end? Ultra-Low-Cost smartphones, basically offering the
same functionality as the western counterparts but with cost drastically
reduced by being based on completely domestic chinese designs and Android.

In this case, the problem is rather the education required to use the
microscope and interpret the results. A professional will probably manage to
finance a $50-$100 microscope, either second hand or as a knock-off,
regardless of being in a third world country.

The paper microscope is a great toy or educational device though.

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kken
Very cool! Any more detailed information about its construction? I bet they
would also be interesting to a different audience - as toy.

Edit: Found this
[http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.1211.pdf](http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.1211.pdf)

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jwildeboer
Unfortunately they try to patent it. Let's see how much the patent license
will add to the 50 cent and how monopolistic they will act. Le Sigh.

[http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013120091A1](http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013120091A1)

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kken
Ca 0.50$ is actually only the Material cost. This number does not include cost
for manufacturing, development, distribution, quality control, etc.

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enscr
Previous discussion here :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7377213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7377213)

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ezequiel-garzon
I wonder how soon this will be developed in large quantities. Funding from
places like Bill Gates' foundation is almost certain, but there seems to be a
lag, as the TED talk is from June 2012, while the arXiv paper [1] as well as
the linked post from March 2014. Maybe hitting the 50¢ mark would require lots
of units?

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1211](http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1211)

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cmsmith
Is diagnosis really a problem for health care in the developing world? I would
imagine that in places like sub-Saharan Africa, they have a pretty good idea
of what the symptoms of malaria look like, and they don't need microscopes so
much as they need medicine.

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imdhmd
Manu Prakash discussing this on TED:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8cF5QPPmWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8cF5QPPmWU)

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m_mueller
He describes the lens as being 'manufactured directly from paper'. I'd like to
understand what this means. I'm guessing that the Origami technique is what
gives the lens its 3D structure, but at least you'll need some highly
transparent material to form it, right? Do they have plastic or even glass
glued into there?

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kken
Its a micro glass lens as described here:

[http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.1211.pdf](http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.1211.pdf)

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geekxworld
Wow, great article!

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Rasmase
This looks really great! I would love to get my hands on one.

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leoc
They're sending out 10,000 free microscopes in a beta-test shortly:
[http://www.foldscope.com/10ksignup](http://www.foldscope.com/10ksignup)

