epifluorescence acquisition

We would like to be able to image 'sybr-safe' -stained cells with the openflexure scope. we have gotten the gfp filter set from comar, and can get images with bright fluorescein, but so far have not been able to see the stained DNA in cells. Even when fixed cells are bright enough to see on our 'diy trans-illuminator' (with side-illumination), they do not show up with the openflexure system so far. We are wondering if a sort of 'binning' could be tried, to average multiple images, thus reducing noise and increasing signal, in order to get the raspberry Pi camera to 'see' our stained cells. Can you get this to work, do you think? For your information, we have previously done such imaging with 500ms exposures on a standard lab epifluor setup and a 5x objective (when the bright field image is acquired with about 10ms exposures). I attach 4 pictures with the bright field and 'epi' images of cheek cells stained with sybr safe

, and of tissue, with fluorescein,

and a last picture with 3 samples, the top, with the cheek cells stained with sybr safe, the left, tissue in water, and right the very bright tissue with fluorescein. Thank you for your input and help.

p.s.(We also still worry that our 10X fluotar objective or the blue LED we are using for excitation might need to be changed...)