Turn Your iPhone Into A Digital Microscope With This $10 Hack [VIDEO]

A new Instructable shows you how to turn your iPhone into a digital microscope capable of 175x magnification, allowing you to take photos of things like plant cells and even their nuclei (via InsideCupertino). All you need is a drill, some bits and a cheap laser pointer, all of which should not cost more than $10.

The man behind the idea is Instructables user Yoshinok, and the whole thing shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes to build once you have the materials. Here’s a list of materials needed:

• Three 4 and 1/2 x 5/16-inch carriage bolts
• Nine 5/16-inch nuts
• Three 5/16-inch wing nuts
• Five 5/16-inch washers
• A piece of 3/4 x 7 x 7-inch plywood for the base
• A piece of 1/8 x 7 x 7-inch plexiglass for the camera stage
• A piece of 1/8 x 3 x 7-inch plexiglass for the specimen stage
• A laser pointer focus lens
• And an LED click light if you want to use the rig to view backlit specimens

You’ll also need to borrow a friend’s drill if you don’t have one yourself. Once you’ve got all of that together, just follow the detailed instructions in the video below to build the base. And once you’ve completed it, you can start taking macro photos of anything that will fit on the specimen stage.