

SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor - klintcho
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-sixth-sense-a-pocket-molecular-sensor-fo

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nobodysfool
Most likely a scam. The Healbe GoBe, and the TellSpec supposedly operated on
the same principles. You can't do Raman spectroscopy in a lit room with a low
wattage laser. If they did have the technology, then they could easily get a
contract to produce these from the government.

This is the state of the art:

Agilent 4300 FTIR

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVKg3s4GswU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVKg3s4GswU)

Large battery for the laser, interchangeable interfaces, "under 5lbs".

Or this...

TruDefender FT

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caiSiLGNYGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caiSiLGNYGU)

3lbs

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alokv28
They never claimed to be doing Raman spectroscopy.

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x1798DE
This seems remarkably useless. Their only use case they present is figuring
out how many calories are in the things you eat, which you can already figure
out by looking it up by name (chances are if you are finding and eating random
things you're not carrying around a portable spectrometer). Even if it were
more convenient to carry around a dedicated calorie-tester device, I hightly
doubt that it would be at ALL accurate just looking at the skin of most things
you eat. It might be accurate if it's using a spectrum "fingerprinting"
technique to identify what it is you are eating and look it up in a table, but
it's likely going to be less accurate than your own ability to assess whether
something is an apple or a pear.

Oh, I guess they also say you can test medicines. I guess that does solve a
lot of problems - I can't tell you how many times I've found unlabeled pills
lying around and thought, "If only I knew what kind of medication this was!"
Gone are the days of "pop-and-pray", I suppose.

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balor123
Or for detecting gluten in food before eating it? The real question, is what
can it accomplish in practice?

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sturmeh
They say they can't detect amounts less than 1%, and it's pointless to assume
there's even that little unless you scan the entire portion of meal you're
eating (there may be no gluten in the area you scan, but there may very well
be in another).

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zvikara
I am at an internet of things meetup at Google Tel Aviv and just saw a first
hand demo of the sensor. I can guarantee this is real and working.

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deutronium
Does anyone know what IR sensor they could be using, I thought for alcohol
spectroscopy measurement you'd need an expensive InGaAs sensor

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illuminate
A fictitious one?

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ph0rque
If this is not a scam, it might be perfect for an aquaponics water quality
sensor (if it can detect single ppm quantities of ammonia, nitrates, and
nitrites). They specifically mention hydroponic solutions analysis.

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dipth
As far as I understand this, the scanner is nothing more than a glorified
barcode-scanner. It can only identify items already in their database and all
the properties that it can find about the scanned item is stuff that has been
manually entered into the database.

So if I scan a piece of cheese, I won't be getting the data about my specific
piece of cheese but rather the same information from the back of the package
which was manually entered into their database.

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aniijbod
Kudos for the skepticism here. Sorry to have to rain on anyone's parade, but
when there is a 'need' for opacity regarding the specifics of the technology
in an announcement which exclusively confines itself to positivity in the way
that this does. Admit it, 'an analytical chemist in the palm of your hand'
does sound magical, but surely we are all duty-bound to ask probing questions.
Personally, I am getting a good feeling about this project, but I sense that
am just being swept up in the excitement. So please, please continue to act as
a counterbalance to my optimism. The risks posed by either being misled or by
sharing unrealistic enthusiasm can only be mitigated by a relentless disregard
for such sentiments. I want to believe the dream that the protagonists
portray: I need others who are less convinced to challenge it, even if I feel
irritated by their cynicism.

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edanm
Just an FYI, I have a close friend who is an employee at this company. While I
know nothing about the field, they're a real company with real employees and
real products, so I don't think it's a scam in the way some people here are
saying.

(Not going to comment on whether anything in the post is "misleading" since I
don't know enough of the field to even begin to understand that).

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gofigurethis
SCAM? All these bloggers that saw this work with their own eyes. Not sure
anyone saw HealBe or TellSpec work. Ever. Pretty sure this is not a SCAM.

[http://gigaom.com/2014/04/29/consumer-
physics-150-smartphone...](http://gigaom.com/2014/04/29/consumer-
physics-150-smartphone-spectrometer-can-tell-the-number-of-calories-in-your-
food/)

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2148944/meet-scio-the-
handhel...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2148944/meet-scio-the-handheld-
scanner-that-identifies-exactly-whats-inside-food-and-pharmaceuticals.html)

[http://www.medgadget.com/2014/04/scio-handheld-molecular-
sca...](http://www.medgadget.com/2014/04/scio-handheld-molecular-scanner-
analyzes-food-drugs-and-neglected-houseplants-video.html)

[http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/29/scio-handheld-sensor-
can-d...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/29/scio-handheld-sensor-can-decipher-
the-chemical-makeup-of-food-pills-and-plants/)

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illuminate
"saw this work"

You mean saw a mock-up, employee of ConsumerPhysics.

