
Taking the SCiO Food Analyzer Grocery Shopping - arm
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/start-ups/israeli-startup-consumer-physics-says-its-scio-food-analyzer-is-finally-ready-for-prime-timeso-we-took-it-grocery-shopping
======
xkcd-sucks
A few problems with scio:

\- It's reading from (mostly) the surface, not the bulk mass. Not great for
heterogeneous things like pills

\- It uses machine learning models on 10-datapoint IR reflectance spectra,
meaning it's only useful in a trained regime. It doesn't give information
about composition, but instead classifies a sample as a member of a pretty
constrained population. So a mystery substance that can't be roughly
identified ('vegetable', 'pill' etc) can't be scanned, etc. If nobody's built
a model for the thing you're scanning and for the property you want to
evaluate, then you're out of luck

\- So, evaluating drugs ("we can distinguish fake from real viagra") is done
by looking at the surface coating which typically has no active ingredients
(and even if there were, the signal would be washed out by inactive
ingredients). The model is basically trained on 10-100 scans of a presumed
good viagra pill, or maybe 10-100 different good viagra pills if they felt
like it

\- Building models requires purchase of a $250 license in addition to the $250
hardware, which is just ridiculous. Of course they're doing the calculations
on their servers, but it still seems really scammy, hostile to developers, and
counterproductive to launching an ecosystem of scanning models. The useless
10-point IR "spectra" notwithstanding, I would totally buy one of these if you
could use open data and open models supported by a public community.

~~~
cr0sh
Regarding your last point - check out this youtube vid:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfiqdooNBb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfiqdooNBb8)

Cheap diffraction grating and a cheap camera; basically, the idea would be to
somehow use an IR sensitive camera (most are - at least in the far-mid range),
an IR source (maybe an unfocused IR laser diode?), and a diffraction grating.

Ideally for the grating you'd use one for IR - but I haven't found one that
wasn't reflective-based (instead of transmissive) - there's probably a good
reason (likely having to do with cheap materials and IR absorption - which is
why lenses and mirrors for laser cutters tend to be pretty pricey).

Anyhow - thems the basics. Take that, get an image from the camera, run a
fourier transform on the data, get the peaks, then pass it thru a trained CNN
(?) - heck, you might be able to forgo the transform part and just use the
data from the camera directly (repurpose imagenet or something).

Yeah - I think this whole thing could be made an open-source project; probably
even an instructable...? At the very least, it could become an interesting
science fair project for some enterprising kid...

~~~
joshumax
> At the very least, it could become an interesting science fair project for
> some enterprising kid

As that "enterprising kid" who couldn't wait until the SCiO was completed, and
who was fed up with his 3d printed visible light spectroscope, I put in a lot
of research effort figuring out how to go about creating a portable,
financially attainable NIR spectroscope. I started out thinking it would be
fairly straightforward since I already worked on creating CCD sensor driver
boards in my early highschool years (after all it just seemed like you'd need
a linear CCD with no IR-cut filter, a diffraction grating, a prism with 95%+
reflectivity, and an IR emitter with a peak wavelength of ~920nm). I invested
about 6 months working through the various roadblocks I encountered until I
managed to get half-decent results from it when taking the spectrum of various
salts. Still never managed to fully refine it since I didn't have the budget
to (Heck the Eagle schematics I sent off to a PCB fabricator were so poorly-
designed that in order to get it to work correctly it required me to solder a
wire across two traces to prevent the sensor from blowing up). It's still
somewhere in one of my drawers and is a fun novelty item (and it did win
(second?) place at my junior science fair) but at least with my design, it
really wasn't the portable tricorder I was hoping for...

~~~
dejv
Hamamatsu (Japanese optical engineering company) is offering micro-
spectrometer heads, which are quite affordable (at least those for VIS
spectrum) and easy to work with and they are much more precise than other DIY
solutions.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Are there competitors/shanzhaied versions out yet? A cursory google search of
MEMS nir specs turns up a few hits.

~~~
hgchoi
Not shanzhaied, but another alternative spectrum sensor for VIS/NIR(390nm -
1000nm) is nanolambda NSP32. www.nanolambda.net

~~~
dejv
I checked datasheet and resolution is something like 25nm, not that great for
most common application. Those Hamamatsu micro-heads are about 14nm (which is
still not good), commercial benchtop instruments around 4nm.

------
annnnd
Interesting, though I fear if this becomes mainstream, the producers will just
optimize food for good readings. Does that mean good food? I would bet not.
It's the same as with roses which nowadays look beautiful, but smell like -
nothing. Unless they put a drop of perfume on it (which they sometimes do).

~~~
xeromal
I read about Red Delicious apples a while back. Everyone I've met hates them
so why do they have such a bold name? Turns out back in the day they were
delicious, but farmers have aimed towards making larger and redder apples at
the expense of taste so now we have beautiful red delicious apples that taste
like ass and have the texture of apple sauce.

------
LyndsySimon
> While the initial applications surround food, Sharon says that the
> technology is not just for checking out food freshness and nutritional
> information; it’s good at analyzing body fat, and distinguishing real
> pharmaceuticals from their fake counterparts. “We’ve done a demo that
> distinguishes real Viagra from fake Viagra,” says Sharon. “That’s the most
> commonly counterfeited drug.”

Now _that 's_ interesting. I wonder if they've considered marketing it as a
way of testing the purity of illegal drugs?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> The user starts out by simplifying the problem a bit by identifying the
> category of the item to be examined—it’s not “What fruit is this,” but,
> “This is an apple, is it any good?” Consumer Physics’ cloud-based software
> then taps into its knowledge base, for an apple, it defines “good” as
> “sweet” (hence the Brix measurement), and considers an apple’s typical range
> of sweetness based on thousands of scans. A graphic on the phone then places
> the apple on a quality range.

The important data and algorithms are held in their servers, not in the phone
app. This gives them a lot of control and responsibility over the models,
leading me to believe that they wouldn't store data on illegal drugs.

I also feel it's kind of scummy to keep this on the server. There is no reason
that this functionality couldn't be offline and on the phone, except to let
them charge you monthly for the hardware you're effectively leasing from them,
rather than letting you use the device you own.

Also, I expect if this does take off that someone will replace their app's
phone home behavior and sever-side components with an equivalent on localhost.
Slightly later will be the cloned scanners that plug into the app. They should
focus on providing higher-quality and higher-accuracy scanners than
competition can achieve, rather than trying to lock out competitors.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
I mean, somebody could just build a model in which "Cocaine" is renamed
"thiotimoline" or something, unless they already have data on known illegal
drugs. On the other hand, government agencies will use better equipment so the
only way that would happen would be if they were specifically trying to catch
people using their device on Bad things

------
leecarraher
this article is worthless "I can’t verify the accuracy of what I was seeing"
... "But it certainly seemed real" when did the ieee become a clickbait,
advertisement machine.

~~~
OldSchoolJohnny
Exactly my thought as well. Hacker news isn't very discerning with this one.

------
wmblaettler
While initially skeptical myself, I found a bit of information on Consumer
Physics' site stating that they use near-infrared spectroscopy. Doing a little
initial research, it seems plausible that they could glean a number of useful
traits from agricultural products, including soluble solids (i.e. sugar
content in fruits), acidity, moisture content and more.

[https://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/technology/](https://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/technology/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-
infrared_spectroscopy#Agr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-
infrared_spectroscopy#Agriculture)

[http://www.intechopen.com/books/developments-in-near-
infrare...](http://www.intechopen.com/books/developments-in-near-infrared-
spectroscopy/using-near-infrared-spectroscopy-in-agricultural-systems)

~~~
endorphone
NIR could give information about the scanned surface, though in this case it's
apparently a low quality/low signal NIR sensor. For this app it was originally
pitched as a magic device that could identify anything, but in the shipped
product you not only have to tell it the category of item you're scanning, in
many cases it gives very little information (e.g. doesn't identify an orange
as an orange), and that information seems highly suspect and of questionable
accuracy regardless.

Everything about this campaign has been dubious. One of the first videos of an
"unboxing" was a close friend of the creator who, after deleting his video,
went around posting comments about how it was just "good fun" and "innovation
takes years", etc. Every demo of the product is a staged example of very low
hanging fruit, pardon the pun. The actual utility of this device seems deeply
suspect.

------
aaronharnly
The article says "Consumers in China, Sharon points out, are particularly
interested in checking food safety, given the history of problems with the
food supply." Is there any reason to think that the most common problems with
food safety would be detectable with this sensor?

I don't doubt it's possible there could be some correlation, but it seems like
a big leap from estimating carbohydrate content to detecting food-borne
illness or contamination. A quick google turns up this comment[1] (of
uncertain reliability!) saying most food safety issues are caused by toxic
animals or plants, pathogenic microorganisms, or chemical contamination.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500434/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500434/)

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Most nasty stuff is present in vanishingly small quantities compared to all
the other crap in biomaterial, which is why most contaminant testing involves
an extraction step, or even extraction+fractionation, before spectrometry.

Somewhat relatedly, inorganic ions don't have nir activity, only their
complexes with organic counterions have nir activity. And there are like a
gazillion different things that complex with lead/mercury/etc. in unpurified
biomaterial, so direct nir measurements of a sample are not a productive
approach.

That being said, it would certainly be a big moneymaker if placebo contaminant
detectors became a thing with Chinese consumers like surgical masks for smog

------
endorphone
I am deeply skeptical of this product and find it bizarre that the IEEE would
have an article with so little regiment -- basically a hyped up PR piece. Why
wouldn't the author use the device themselves, without someone with a profound
bias controlling the show?

~~~
codewaffle
The only solid info I seemed to get out of this article, is that it's a sugar-
content analyzer paired with a food database.

~~~
tcskeptic
It's not a sugar-content analyzer -- though it can do that. It is a consumer
grade NIR spectroscope that pairs with a smart phone. Whether that will prove
to be useful or not is up for debate but the capability for consumers seems
truly novel to me.

------
dekhn
This article is damning the product with faint praise. It's basically
worthless for the purpose they use it.

------
abledon
Awesome! I can see hobbyists buying some of these then setting up online
review hubs for each city, labelling the quality of produce in each store /
farmer's market produce section when they go out on their 'measurement'
excursions.

~~~
dekhn
except the values will change from day to day as providers change their source
mixes. nobody really cares what the exact sugar or protein content of their
fruits is. It doesn't correlate with "quality".

~~~
LyndsySimon
> nobody really cares what the exact sugar or protein content of their fruits
> is

I disagree here - as someone on a ketogenic diet, the sugar content of food is
extremely important to me. Labelling standards are abysmal, too; it's legal to
market something as "0g carbohydrates" if there is less than a 0.5g carbs per
serving. Considering that serving sizes can be very small, that can be
extremely misleading.

For instance - a bag of pork rinds may be listed as 0g carbs, even going so
far as marketing that fact on the front of the bag, while the third ingredient
by weight is sugar. If the bag claims that there are 20 servings, then the
only real information you have is that there are less than 10g of carbs in the
bag. When you're on a diet that limits you to 20g per day, that's a huge
problem.

~~~
dekhn
This device does not have the accuracy to provide you with the information you
need.

------
diimdeep
I think most vegetables covered in some protective layer, they don't even
smell. You have to cut them open to properly use spectrometer in that case you
can just taste them.

------
hgchoi
There is another alternative that looks like more of a solid tool.
www.nanolambda.net

anyhow spectral sensing could be one of the main stream for IoT sensing

------
anotheryou
haha, funny layout on big screens: 3/4 of page filled with other articles.

~~~
interlocutor2
Yep, perfect use case for 'Click to Remove Element' extension.

