Design of a portable spectrophotometric system part II: Using a digital microscope as detector

A simple, cheap and portable spectrophotometric system is described. It is based on the use of a cheap digital microscope housed from a 3D printed device which simultaneously supports a LED as a light source and a flow cell. A simple electronic device to power the LED is also described using electronic smd components. Both the digital microscope and the power source required to light the LED are connected to the USB ports of a notebook in order to avoid the need of any power source to complete the portable system. This method was applied to make the determination of Fe²⁺ with o-phenanthroline as chromogenic reagent. The reaction provided the red complex which is used to monitor the analytical response with the digital microscope.