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Has anyone tried using one of the cheapo USB borescopes available on the 'bay...??

I fancy checking out my barrels after cleaning to see whats left, and I see there are 5.5mm diameter borescopes available which simply plug into a USB socket on your PC...

As they're mainly less that £10, I'd assume you get what you pay for and they're not going to anywhere near the £1k scopes quality, but are they any use at all...??

TIA

Daryll.

I have ordered one last week, heaven knows when it will be here coming from China, but I'll be doing a full report on them when I get it...

Have a look here

I had need of a borescope several years ago, no one I knew locally had one so I made my own. It was a bit of a cobbled together set-up but it worked well enough to do the job. Total cost was less than £50.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah1VUZ1_4CI

I bought one of the cheap ebay endoscopes to use as a borescope.

I was reasonably impressed - it certainly showed me whether the bore was clean or not, but because the minimum focus distance of the camera is a couple of inches, it's hard to get a clear enough image to assess the quality of the rifling. However the idea of pushing a reflective plug in front of the camera in one of the previous posts looks worthwhile doing.

However with the camera I bought I'm tied to a pc and I can't get it to work with an android phone or tablet. I think that you can get some models of endoscope that you can work on Android via a USB OTG cable and port. There's an app called CameraFi that works apparently.

Triffid

OK, thanks Guys, sounds positive, I may have to make a small investment... :)

Daryll.

Triffid wrote:I bought one of the cheap ebay endoscopes to use as a borescope.



However with the camera I bought I'm tied to a pc and I can't get it to work with an android phone or tablet. I think that you can get some models of endoscope that you can work on Android via a USB OTG cable and port. There's an app called CameraFi that works apparently.

Triffid

CameraFi works well on my Tesco Hudl, it's free app so give it a try.. Here's a video of it in use with a webcam but it also works with my cheap endoscope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2PF2xv_OPs

Just downloaded it onto my Samsung android phone. What make / type is the camera used, any ideas!!

Geordie bloke wrote:Just downloaded it onto my Samsung android phone. What make / type is the camera used, any ideas!!

Look for one that is 'OTG' compatible. That's the special USB cable connection to the phone. The phone has to have an OTG-compatible USB socket too. There are plenty of borescopes on ebay for less than a tenner.

Triffid

I bought one of these budget borescopes for £80 from a UK RFD:

http://www.milidonis.gr/cameras/topshot ... html?sl=EN

It's good value for money for the average shooter who wants to check for dirt and rust. You can connect the video to a monitor to get a bigger picture.