In many companies working on electronics, standard stereo microscopes (either the standard binocular-style type or the "eyes free" Mantis-style type) has become the norm in order to increase the efficiency when working with small (typically 50 micrometers to 10 millimeters) objects like SMD components.

But what is often neglected is the ability to let multiple users view the stereoscopic image simultaneously. This is not only important for teaching reasons, but you can image how much a "pair programming" like approach for electronics could boost productivity.

Sure, there are solutions for letting someone take a peek into. Some higher-end stereo microscope (especially the classical "binocular" type) offer a third eyepiece, sometimes called a "pupil's eyepiece". Also, many microscopy setups use an additional microscope path with a camera, so you can use a standard monitor in order to display the image while the main user is looking directly through the optics.

But all of those solutions have two things in common: Not only are they expensive (a good camera setup for an existing microscope can cost many hundreds up to thousands of €) but everyone except the main user will only see a plain old 2D image .

Enter Stereo Ninja, the low-budget stereo microscope. Due to its unique concept of using a 3D monitor combined with dual cameras, it basically supports an arbitrary number of viewers.

Let's suppose you're using a shutter-based 3D monitor like the Asus VG248QE. "Shutter" means that everyone who wants to view the 3D image will have to wear shutter glasses. But that means that everyone who wears shutter glasses and is able to look at the monitor will be able to view the full 3D image - and everyone will be able to experience the same quality of stereoscopic image

In other words, with Stereo Ninja, you can easily have 5 to 10 concurrent users, and even more if you use additional hardware like active HDMI splitters to split the image to multiple monitors.

And there's one added gadget for you: Stereo Ninja supports 2D and 3D live streaming over the network thanks to StereoPi's awesome streaming support. But you'll have to wait a couple of days, since we'll cover this feature in a future project log :-)