Microscope Viewer

Desktop viewer for non-UVC USB microscopes using the Geek Szitman supercamera protocol. It was built for the microscope detected as:

0329:2022 Geek szitman supercamera

Features

• Direct USB capture for non-UVC supercamera devices.
• Electron UI with device refresh, start/stop controls, live image display, FPS/frame counters, and bridge logs.
• JPEG snapshot saving.
• udev setup script for user-level USB access.
• Source-only repository with repeatable Node and Python setup.

Intent

This app exists to make the microscope usable from the desktop without relying on /dev/video0. The device is visible on the USB bus, but it does not expose itself as a standard UVC/V4L2 webcam, so Electron's normal getUserMedia() path cannot see it.

The app uses Electron for the UI and a small Python bridge for direct USB capture through the supercamera driver. The bridge emits JPEG frames to the Electron main process, and the renderer displays them as a live feed.

Constraints That Drove The Design

• The microscope reports Vendor Specific Class, not USB Video Class.
• Linux currently attaches no kernel driver to 0329:2022, so no /dev/video* node appears.
• Browser webcam APIs only enumerate standard camera devices, so they are insufficient for this hardware.
• Direct USB access usually needs a udev permission rule, otherwise the bridge may need root.
• The available reverse-engineered driver reports this camera stream as JPEG frames at 640 x 480, regardless of the marketing 1600x label.

Requirements

• Linux desktop with USB access.
• Node.js and npm.
• Python 3.12 or newer.
• A supported microscope connected over USB:
  • 0329:2022
  • 2ce3:3828

Setup

Install dependencies:

npm run bootstrap

Install the USB permission rule:

npm run setup:udev

Then unplug and reconnect the microscope. If capture still fails with a permission error, log out and back in so the plugdev group change is applied.

Run

npm start

Click Refresh if the camera was plugged in after launch, then click Start.

Useful checks:

npm run check:camera
npm test

For a direct bridge stream test:

timeout 10s .venv/bin/python bridge/supercamera_bridge.py stream

Notes

The app also documents failures in the right-side bridge log. If the device appears in npm run check:camera but streaming fails, the most likely causes are USB permissions, a busy/stale USB interface, or a protocol variant not handled by the Python driver.

Documentation

• Architecture
• Troubleshooting
• Contributing