Multipurpose Otoscope-Ear Scope Camera

This is vastly superior to otoscopes sold in the drugstore. Much better light and the image can be screen capped off your computer. Downside: doesn’t connect with iPhones. Requires some practice and is not easy to use on an uncooperative child. Additional upside: I can see this being useful in non-ear setting where you need to see inside a small closed space.

So what started off a spur of the moment purchase because it was on sale on Cyber Monday as a Lightning Deal, turned out to be a pretty interesting story. My package arrived a couple of days after ordering so I decided to play around with it. I downloaded the endoscope app with the most ratings on the list from the Google Play store into my Samsung Galaxy S7 edge phone. I initially thought the connection from the endoscope wasn’t compatible to the phone after trying to connect it but if you push hard enough, it does fit. We started checking it out and playing around with checking everybody’s ears. I have 4 little ones so naturally everyone is very excited and having fun looking in their ears. I have to say that using the black cone connections was the best and easiest to use. I used the scope without any attachments and the picture seemed more blurry and more uncomfortable. Using the black attachment was more comfortable with the kids. The little scoop attachments were very uncomfortable and for some reason was not able to get in the ear the same distance as with the black attachment so I think may be a little useless if you need to reach further into the ear. Well low and behold we are looking in my 7 year old son’s ear when we come across what looks like a spider in his ear! You can see the uploaded pictures. Well we spent hours and hours trying to figure out a way to get it out using the scope non stop. Not to fret! At the end of the night my son was able to use a pair of tweezers to gently pull out what looks like a piece of local weed LOL. Needless to say how relieved we were when we figured out it wasn’t a dead spider. Saved us a trip to the Doctor for sure!

In the past, I’ve had a problem with excess ear wax build up and have had nurses irrigate my ear to clear it out. There are over the counter drops to basically do the same thing, but the problem was I never knew if I needed to use them and if they were doing anything. This camera helped with that.While it came with an adapter to hookup it up to my smartphone, I used it on my PC so I didn’t have to download an app. It worked flawlessly right away. I just plugged the camera into my computer’s USB port, waiting 30 seconds for Windows to find it, and then opened Window’s built-in Camera app. It instantly found and showed the camera.The camera itself has pretty good image quality. Because the lens of the camera has to be pretty small to fit in your ear, don’t expect stellar, hi-def image qualify, but I could clearly see my ear drum. The LED lights on it can get warm but they are adjustable with a built-in slide dimmer.The tool comes with 3 adapters to use in your ear and make sure you’re not scratching it and 3 scoops. I was very afraid to use the attached scoops because I didn’t want to damage anything. When I did see a blockage in my one ear, I then went an used ear wax drops and a syringe to irrigate my ear. Then when I used the camera again, I could see the blockage was reduced.Overall, it’s a pretty good product

Background:My wife’s been complaining about weird noises in her ear. We first went to a doctor, who confirmed seeing “some sort of infection” and prescribed oral antibiotics and corticosteroid eardrops (which can potentially destroy your hearing, by the way, not that he told us). After the meds were used up, she felt a lot better, but the next week, she started feeling weird again. So we waited another week and then went to the clinic a second time. This time, he couldn’t really see anything wrong and told us to come back if things worsened. Well, it didn’t worsen but it didn’t get better, either. So we were sort of left to decide whether we wanted to risk wasting more money on a visit that led to nothing, or her hearing. I came over to Amazon to see how much otoscopes cost, decided we wouldn’t need a $500 device, and bought this.Review:Well, folks, my whole family likes this little otoscope, and it sure paid for itself.It was an absolute breeze to install, has adjustable brightness, and is decently safe to use with a decently clear picture. Just know that it has a fixed focus, so it will only focus properly at a fixed distance to whatever you’re trying to see.We plugged it in to my Win10 laptop, which automatically recognized it as a camera and installed all the drivers on its own. Didn’t need to download shady drivers from shady websites. Opened up the default Camera app on Win10, and boom! the screen displayed my face as viewed from the laptop’s webcam. Luckily, we found a little icon on the Camera app that switches you over to the next camera you have, and that happened to be this otoscope. So that was all we needed to do to get set up. Plug in, wait, open Camera app, click little icon that changes the active camera.Everyone in my family took turns looking at their eardrums, nostrils, eyes…. Haha, it was pretty fun. But we did find some weird yellow stuff in my wife’s ear, and SINCE YOU CAN TAKE PICTURES OR RECORD VIDEO STRAIGHT FROM WIN10’S DEFAULT CAMERA APP that we already had running, she took a few shots, sent the files over to her friend’s husband who happened to be a doc, and he told us it’s probably dried pus from the previous infection. We bought an ear cleaning kit at the pharmacy for 5 bucks and that took care of the problem within a few days.If your room temperature is 75 degrees like ours, the camera can start getting warm pretty quick on max brightness. Since max brightness also washes out the picture a lot of the time, just turn it down to half and make adjustments from there. It’ll be plenty clear enough once you get the hang of it.Conclusion:It’s cheap, it’s decent quality, absolutely a breeze to set up. Most likely plenty good enough for almost anyone that just wants to get an idea of things before risking medical bills. We like it!

 It only took me a couple of minutes to set up everything. This otoscope is very easy to use on mac, both Photo Booth and QuickTime Player support this device. I like to keep my ears clean and this little gadget is definitely a game-changer! Now I can SEE how well I’m cleaning too! Worth every penny! Highly recommended!