The Atomic Force Microscopy is a very versatile technique that allows to characterize surfaces by acquiring topographies with sub-nanometer resolution. This technique often overcomes the problems and capabilities of electron microscopy when characterizing few nanometers thin coatings over solid substrates. They are expensive, in the half million dollar range for standard units, and therefore it is often difficult to upgrade to new units with improved characteristics. One of these improvements, motorization and automation of the measurements is very interesting to sample different parts of a substrate in an unattended way. Here we report a low cost upgrade under 60 $ to a Dimension 3000 AFM based on a control unit using an Arduino Leonardo. It enables to acquire dozens or hundreds of images automatically by mimicking keyboard shortcuts and interfacing the AFM PCI card

The Dimension 3000 AFM used in this work was kindly donated by Prof. Nicholas D. Spencer from ETH-Zurich. MAFR acknowledges support by the project PID2020-116615RA-I00, and grant IJC2018-035946-I, funded by MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033. JGGF and CLMM acknowledge support from grant A1S35536 by Conacyt Mexico.