Despite being the size of a grain of salt, a new microscopic camera can capture crisp, full-colour images on par with normal lenses that are 500,000 times larger. The ultra-compact optical device was developed by a team of researchers from Princeton University and the University of Washington. It overcomes problems with previous micro-sized camera designs, which have tended to take only distorted and fuzzy images with very limited fields of view. The new camera could allow super-small robots to sense their surroundings, or even help doctors see problems within the human body. Despite being the size of a grain of salt, a new microscopic camera design can capture crisp, full-colour images on par with lenses 500,000 times larger.

A research team at the University of Washington has developed a small, lightweight wireless camera that can be carried by beetles. In the future, the device could also allow tiny robots to see.

It's a great way to quickly review the days' goings-on when you get home from work. The camera's new 1080p resolution is impressive, rendering razor-sharp images with brilliant colors in day mode, and sharp detail and optimal contrast with night vision on. Unfortunately, the camera image still suffers from fish-eye bending around the edges. Many other home security cameras use some kind of de-warping technology to mitigate this byproduct of wide-angle lenses. It might be time for Ezviz to look into something similar. The fussy nature of motion-detection algorithms often means benign movement, such as a tree branch bouncing in the wind outside a window, can trigger an alert. Too many of these false alarms and your security camera can feel more like an annoyance than a help. Unfortunately, errant alerts were common with the original Ezviz Mini and the early version of the Ezviz app offered few customization options to curb the camera's hair-trigger sensitivity.

From body parts to supercars, the family of 3D printed products just keeps expanding. But in a study published last week in Science Advances, scientists think small: German researchers 3D printed different lenses--each smaller than the width of a human hair--onto a chip. Such micro-cameras could be perfect for tiny drones and other pint-sized robots. "Our system is the only one in the world [where] you can put different optic systems on one imaging sensor that is very small," says study author Alois Herkommer, an applied physicist at the University of Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany. "The advantage of doing this by 3D printing is that each of these lenses can be different," says Herkommer.