
Pocket spectrometer lets you measure the molecular makeup of nearly anything - RogerWinn
http://inhabitat.com/worlds-first-pocket-molecular-sensor-measures-the-chemical-makeup-of-everything/
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leecarraher
having built the system and analysis method behind an absorption
photospectroscopy (IR/VIS/UV) based device to measure a specific set of
rigorously prepared and filtered bio-analytes, i would strongly advise against
accepting this devices claims. Spectroscopy is a wonderful tool, but it's not
a new one, and far more sophisticated machines have tried and failed at this
consumer level device's claims. caveat emptor.

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uberlux
Can you be more specific? What claims are unrealistic? What do you think are
good consumer applications for photo spectroscopy?

~~~
leecarraher
they give examples of alcohol in beer and sugar content of foods.

experimental specific:

alcohol lies in the vis spectra near what we would call yellow. beer is often
yellow, but not due to its alcohol content. beer is yellow because of the malt
used in it's creation. reflective vis. spec. cannot differentiate the two, and
would always give a vastly false reading.

practical specific:

Glucose lies in the near ir (and has been known to for a long time), so this
device could theoretically be used measure glucose levels in diabetic
patients. a potentially multi billion dollar industry. So why would we worry
about trivial things like sugar content in food (that could be obtained from
reading the food's label), if we could instead be helping millions of people
and making tons of money while doing it?

...Simply because it doesn't work well.

Sugar, in wine is often assessed transparently (absorption spectra, as
reflectance is quite difficult to get clear signals due to surface shape, and
air surface interface on incidence angles etc...) via polarization
spectroscopy. there is visible spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy perpetrated
spectroscopy... this does one, and in a narrow RF range. And in our studies
and research, isolating one spectral signal from another was extremely
difficult and required an enormous catalog of known solution variants to build
our model. This doesn't even mention the technological issues of calibrating,
and certifying light sources, varying saturation time of your ccd array,
warming up a light source (LED is a weak spectroscopy source as it is designed
specifically to be narrow band).

these things come out once every few years and almost always fall flat. I'm
sure kickstarter is littered with these things.

One use: Could be used with things that have reagents added to expose the
analyte more clearly, and then to assess the degree that analyte presents
itself using the before reagent added as a baseline.

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staticvar
Also worth checking out, the $10 Open Source spectrometer that attaches to
your phone.

[http://store.publiclab.org/products/foldable-mini-
spectromet...](http://store.publiclab.org/products/foldable-mini-spectrometer)

The challenge seems to be to understand how to interpret the results.
SpectralWorkbench.org is place that folks are sharing scans and comparing.

[http://spectralworkbench.org/](http://spectralworkbench.org/)

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JulianMorrison
I could see something like this being very useful for preventing deaths due to
contaminated party drugs. If it works.

~~~
jacquesm
That's not the sort of test you'll be able to do with this device. Pills tend
to be opaque for one, and the contamination may very well be too small to
detect anyway.

~~~
OopsCriticality
I agree that this device wouldn't work for that assay, but the opacity of the
pills isn't a factor: the optical bench is too small and the illumination will
be too low to do anything worthwhile.

~~~
jacquesm
What about: handedness of the molecules, variations in density (the surface of
pills tends to be compressed)?

~~~
OopsCriticality
You're right that chirality is important and this thing isn't able to probe
that. As to what I'll broadly call "sample prep", you're right again to point
out how that is a critical consideration. So you're double right. Operating in
NIR does give deeper penetration, which is one of the reasons to consider NIR
spectroscopy in an application; I'd guess that this thing operates somewhere
in the 700–900nm range, but I admittedly don't know what kind of interrogation
volume that gives for a pill.

So, I'm wrong to casually dismiss opacity of the target. That stems from a
bias due to a background in instrumentation (meaning, I start my thinking
there). I think I'm still right though to think that instrumentation is a
bigger problem than sample prep _for this device_ , which I didn't do a good
job in stating earlier.

~~~
jacquesm
Fair enough. And I should have done a (much) better job at indicating why I
thought this instrument would not be suitable.

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saiya-jin
if I understood correctly it works with surface light reflection near IR
spectrum, which is fine for certain set of food, and useless for many others.
Anything that has different structure inside compared to surface will give
only partial results (from apples to chocolate coating to ... well you get the
point).

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sqldba
It sounds like what the Vessyl was trying to do and has failed miserably, as
evidenced from repeated delays.

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florian-f
from [the
store]([https://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/order](https://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/order)):

$249/ $449 for the dev kit.

> Expected shipping date: March 2016

Sadly, no mention of (F)OSS anywhere on the site.

~~~
staticvar
Check out [http://store.publiclab.org/products/foldable-mini-
spectromet...](http://store.publiclab.org/products/foldable-mini-spectrometer)
and [http://spectralworkbench.org/](http://spectralworkbench.org/)

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ElijahLynn
Really hoping this is legit and the crowdsourcing of samples provides more
accuracy! This would have a significant change on the future of the world more
quickly than most.

