Has anyone ever heard of - or better yet know of - any sort of automated system that can take a 360° image of sample tubes?
I don’t have a lot of details on throughput or downstream application, but I imagine this system would take a sample tube (13mm tube or similar) and rotate it on a pedestal while taking a panoramic image before sending the tube off to storage or production or w/e. The image would likely be used for some sort of archive or even QC inspection record.
I don’t imagine this would be an extremely difficult thing to duct tape together, but surely someone has already developed something like this.
Rotating a stage that holds a sample tube would be pretty easy - small electric motors usually spin by default so you don’t need any complicated mechanics. Just put a 3D printed adapter on a stepper motor. You can do a raspberry pi + A4988 driver for the controls.
Probably anything you can buy off the shelf will be a lot more expensive since these are for microscopes and instruments that need a lot more precision than you’ll likely need.