Pocket SCiO Spectrometer Sends Chemical Composition of Anything To Smartphones 82
MojoKid writes: Is that a tricorder in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? All joking aside, the handheld SCiO could truly make you feel like a member Bones McCoy's medical team. The SCiO turns science fiction into science fact by shrinking mass spectrometry technology used in traditional lab settings into a device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. While pricey handheld spectrometers have been available for researchers, the SCiO is the first such device marketed directly at consumers. To get the SCiO down to a reasonable price point, Consumer Physics uses near-IR spectroscopy and optics typically found in smartphones to measure the light reflected from any given object. Held at a distance of 5 to 15 mm from the intended target, SCiO captures reflected spectrum data and uploads it to its own cloud platform. The company's proprietary algorithms then analyze the data and send the information back down to your smartphone (SCiO require a Bluetooth connection). Reportedly, this whole process occurs within 1.5 seconds. The hope is to empower consumers to learn more about the world around them and even about the things that we put in our mouth. You'll be able to ascertain nutritional information about the foods you eat without having to rely on labels, or even determine the ripeness of fruits and vegetables with the push of a button. The Whole Foods crowd will be all over this, one would think.
Re: (Score:2)
But because it's a Microsoft product, it will be too riddled with bugs and viruses to work as intended. A woman who has this implanted will shoot out babies like a Pez dispenser.
Can I test cocaine and MDMA with this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can I test cocaine and MDMA with this?
I thought that too but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It won't be the Whole Foods crowd that will have a field day with this story, but the conspiracy theorists.
If this device actually works, another application I could envision would be amateur prospecting. But smartphones know your location, so same problem.
Re: I thought that too but.... (Score:3)
I don't think the "Whole Foods" crowd would benefit at all. For example, they'd use it on a banana and see aspartic acid, which is *gasp* a CHEMICAL!!! And after that they'll go back to snake oil organic food and not bother using their new toy on it because they'll just remember the one ironclad rule: Natural is ALWAYS better.
Re: (Score:2)
So? The smart phone will report it's location at the time that you analyse your specimen. Which will probably be in the hotel/ motel that you go to when you get back to something resembling civilisation.
You think that you'll have a mobile phone signal out in the field at your prospect? Damned all chance of that, because mobile phone companies don't put transmission towers where they don't
Re: (Score:3)
It wasnt my first thought, but giving this to drug buyers to identify not the drug (which it could) but rather if there was anything horrible in what the drug was cut with, might be a terrific harm-reduction tool. Not getting burned would be how you would market it to the drug buyer - but having it set off an alarm if the stuff was cut with rat poison or something equally deadly when put in ones (nose/veins/eye/toes/orifice) could save some grief. Of course, the cloud would probably just send a text to th
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking more like crystal meth. Is the product I'm buying really 99.1% pure?
Re: (Score:3)
You should get one, you will be able to check your meds are not out of date......
this is not mass spectrometry (Score:1)
near-IR spectroscopy does not = mass spectrometry
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
So because near-IR spectrometry "sounds suspicious" (i.e. you haven't looked it up [wikipedia.org]) this is "garbage". Thank you for your expert opinion. You're correct that it's not mass spectrometry per se but everything else you've supposed about NIR spectroscopy is utter bullshit, and worse garbage than the article contains. Read the Wiki article.
Re:this is not mass spectrometry (Score:4, Informative)
I just looked at the article. You owe me an apology.
Re: (Score:1)
It has reached the point where I am inclined to trust a random slashdotter more than I am inclined to visit Wikipedia. There are so many things that a Wikipedia article simple can not, does not, cover. I am often at a loss for words when I see articles that are ostensibly about subjects that I am fluent in. My doctorate is in Applied Mathematics and you would be amazed at the number of things I have found that are not necessarily wrong but not right either. They are just either mis-represented or simply not
MASS spectrometry? (Score:4, Insightful)
shrinking mass spectrometry technology used in traditional lab settings into a device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand
Surely this device has nothing whatsoever to do with a mass-spec? It doesn't appear to use any of the techniques that a mass spectrometer does (even if it produces results to the non-technical consumer that appear similar) and to use the term sends a misleading message.
Maybe I should buy a whistle and re-badge it as a "sonic screwdriver"?
Re:MASS spectrometry? (Score:5, Informative)
Surely this device has nothing whatsoever to do with a mass-spec?
Of course not - in fact, already the headline should arouse suspicion that somebody in the chain of communication hasn't got a clue: "... chemical composition of anything ...". There no instrument at all in existence on this planet capable of doing this. It may be reasonably easy to measure the relative abundances of chemical elements and their isotopes in a sample, but not with a simple 'near infrared spectrometer', I would have thought, and as for analysing such a spectrum to get the 'chemical composition of anything', the fact is that there are millions or billions of common molecules arounds - such as proteins - and we do not have any simply understanding of what their spectral fingerprint might be. Single atoms have well-defined, discrete spectra, but complex molecules may not even have discrete spectra.
On top of that - even if we were able to calculate and measure spectra perfectly, and assuming that the very limited 'near infrared' bandwidth is sufficient to distinguish all molecules, the analysis part is likely to require massive processing power. All in all - a load of hyped up nonsense.
Re: (Score:3)
On our slashdots, posted by MojoKid?
Sir, I put it to you that you are jesting!
Re: (Score:1)
Think of it like a camera. It has limited wavelength response, limited resolution, and computing anything from the images is really really hard.
But until you have the camera, you won't get face recognition or object tracking or AR or Deep Dream, and once you have the camera and it's cheap and processing power increases sometimes you can be amazed at what can be done within its limitations.
You basically seem to be saying the camera is a pointless invention because we don't completely understand photography
Re: (Score:2)
I also think the processing on the server seems suspicious- I hardly think there is anything you could do with a single image that can't be processed on a modern smartphone. Seems like a marketing/data gather play more than anything.
Re: (Score:3)
NO, but there are gadgets that can do some of those - look up XRFs - they tend to do better with bulk/surface/soil analysis of atomic species, especially the heavier ones. I worked with one of these a bit (Older Niton unit with a non-excited X source) when helping my wife with her PHd research, which involved finding the Manganese levels in soil. People use these all the time to find lead in kids toys, and alloy analysis as you queried above.
A device that can do XRF and NIRS (the one in the article) at hi
Re: (Score:2)
Surely this device has nothing whatsoever to do with a mass-spec?
It doesn't matter. Package it up to look like a Star Trek Tricorder, and sell them at Star Trek conventions. They will be an instant hit. Trekkies will have a hoot and a half running around scanning each other.
Maybe I should buy a whistle and re-badge it as a "sonic screwdriver"?
That would sell well at Dr. Who conventions. Maybe Vikorinox could bring out a Dr. Who Sonic Screwdriver Swiss Army Knife . . . ?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Investment opportunity (Score:1)
Are you seriously using Slashdot for research?
Re: (Score:1)
I have some play money that I use to invest. I do surprisingly better than I thought. I actually average between 8 and 13% which is pretty impressive, if I say so myself, as I do all of it "myself" and have absolutely no training. My first few years I averaged -2% or so but I have long since made up for it. Anyhow, yes - I do use this site in my considerations. I do not take investing advice from anyone here but it is good for noticing trends and catching things that may be game changers in the near future.
Re: Reality (Score:2)
Dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) might not be bad, but fracking certainly is.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, the point was not what is or is not bad, but rather what uneducated people THINK is or is not bad.
What was the latest craze that I heard? We shouldn't be consuming chemicals that a 5 year old can't pronounce. Like what in the actual fuck.
Re: (Score:3)
Smartphones are still drastically slower than individual PCs, let alone cloud services.
I know they're overstating the case, and that it's a near-IR spectrometer, not a mass spectrometer. That said, I still like the general concept. Does anyone know whether near-IR spectroscopy can be used for identifying mineral species (for example, between different types of zeolites and the like)? I love rock hunting but many species have similar visual appearances.
And even on the food standpoint I find it interesting...
Re: (Score:3)
Smartphones are still drastically slower than individual PCs, let alone cloud services.
Most of the time that I'm not at home, my smartphone is exactly as fast as my smartphone plus cloud services, because I don't have internet access for it. I live in the sticks where it's worthless. Any device which requires a cloud connection is a non-starter for me. And I am precisely the target market for this device, if it suited my needs; I have the money, and I want to be able to do what it claims to do.
Re: Smartphone as powerful as 80's supercomputer (Score:2)
Interesting; likely more limited than advertised (Score:5, Informative)
Designing spectrometer is what I do for a living and with my experience and knowledge, I have serious doubts this device has sufficient resolving power to do what they claim it can/would/should do. To identify chemical components, you need a minimum spectral resolution (depending on the species you want to identify). To do quantitative analysis, the requirements are event higher. Typically, for solid NIR spectroscopy, I would aim at 2 to 4 cm^-1 spectral resolution. Under this, you can maybe check for the presence of a specific compound or compound family, but the capability to do so will be very dependent on the overall chemical composition.
Its possible to reduce the size of a spectrometer while somewhat keeping the resolution. But that goes only up to a certain extent... and that goes only with trade on signal to noise ratio. At some point physics overtakes wishful thinking. Reducing the instrument, and thus the optical throughput, you need longer measurement times to achieve adequate signal quality. Quantitative analysis with a (large) lab NIR spectrometer can take minutes, depending on the material being analysed. When you design spectrometers, you are constantly trading on aspect for another and by bringing a NIR spectrometer to that size, you traded a LOT of stuff away.
I also see spectral calibration being an issue with this device, then it works in reflectance and not in transmittance. It cannot be self-calibrating and directly provide a transmission/absorption spectrum. Maybe it is calibrated once during the production and assumed to be stable? If that is sufficient is, from my experience, questionable.
On the other hand, this is a very exiting breakthrough. I might even get my hands on one for fun. Why? because its, as they so well market it, a liberalisation of matter. Its a first step in being able to identify any substance that we get our hands on. While it may not yet be able to provide a full chemical make-up of a product, with enough a priori information it may be very useful.
Let me give you an example where such a device can be its money worth. When you buy fruits and vegetables that are bio/organic, you want them really to be that way. This decision to spend more money on these healthier food items is solely based on trust, which is often exploited. I doubt that the analysis of such a product can do what they claim (most of the return information is most likely deduced from the a priori information provided). But even with a limited spectral resolution and sensitivity, it should be able to identify spectral signatures of typical herbicides and pesticides.
Re: Interesting; likely more limited than advertis (Score:1)
Most of the materials you cited are usually marked with a symbol or code that you can look up.
Re: Interesting; likely more limited than adverti (Score:2)
Re:Interesting; likely more limited than advertise (Score:5, Informative)
You will not be able to determine raw elements with a NIR spectrometer. With a NIR-LWIR spectrometer, you can only identify molecular compounds, because what you are observing is actually the vibration modes of the molecules. In this spectral range, you will have a lot of signature for organic compounds. So you may be able determine if something is made of plastic. Determining the kind is trickier because most plastics are actually very similar and would require a device with higher spectral resolution to make such a determination.
For elementary elements (iron, copper, gold, etc.), you can forget it. That device will not help you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I thought spectrometry was destructive testing. I was under the impression that it was burned and the gas was analyzed. It turns out that that is, more specifically, gas chromatography - mass spectrography. I did not know this. Your posts motivated me to learn a little bit more, it is not my area of expertise, so I appreciate it. One of the things I value most about this site is the diversity of experts who are here and willing to share their education with us unwashed masses.
Anyhow, mass spectrometry is do
Re: (Score:2)
Vibrational spectroscopy is non-destructive. You simply observe the vibrational (or translation, or rotation) modes of molecules. Most systems measure what is absorbed (ie. you have an known IR source and measure what of it doesn't get through - assuming the absorbed photons corresponds to vibration modes of the molecule). Although this is an active measurement approach, the energy needs are too long to cause damage to the molecule or samples. But you could go in at higher energy level... this is basically
Re: (Score:1)
Much thanks. That is, for the most part, how I understood it would likely be. I appreciate your time. Thank you for putting it into words that even I can understand. It is neat taking a look into other areas of expertise.
Re: (Score:2)
There are way more Kickstarter failures than successes and seeing that this is one of the more ambitious projects, it is very unlikely to actually deliver anything close to what was promised.
Here is another analysis of the product by a analytical scientist.-
http://www.cnet.com/news/kicks... [cnet.com]
Re: (Score:3)
That actually doesn't sound that bad:
Re: (Score:2)
That's the best case scenario. I'm usually an optimist, but this is Kickstarter we are talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
It should also be able to do validations, ie you can say "is this valium", and it would be able to say yes or no, by matching the signature of valium as seen through its hardware. I guess that why the cloud db is there, its not so much doing analysis and working out what the thing is from its consituents, but matching the signal it gets with a db of things that have been scaned by tbe device that are already known.
Re: (Score:2)
That article hits the nail on the head, although I do not share the negative view on the conclusions.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for your insights. Still trying to decide whether something like this should go on my wish list ;) (see above for my potential uses).
How accurate, exactly, do you think such a device could be? Obviously it's not going to be pulling out the sort of precision of a professional spectrometer. But you mention, for example, being able to identify the signatures of herbicides and pesticides. Do you mean, for example, "This contains imidacloprid", or more like, "This contains a nicotinoid of some variety"?
H
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for your insights. Still trying to decide whether something like this should go on my wish list ;) (see above for my potential uses).
Don't expect to much of it for the first generation / first product. Once you get a few competitors and iterations on the technology, you can have a serious look at it. I'd also wait to see a view "in-depth technical reviews" with labor-based comparison studies. To satisfy your curiosity, if your budget allows it, it will definitely be worth it (assuming it at least work a little). I expect the results at first to feel a little like translating something in some language with google translate and translatin
Re: (Score:1)
But even with a limited spectral resolution and sensitivity, it should be able to identify spectral signatures of typical herbicides and pesticides.
I would be amazed if it could. With a sufficiently large database to draw from, and clever processing, I can imagine being able to identify the bulk constituent, but anything else would be lost in the noise. It might be able to tell you if your apple is waxed or not, but not if it's got ppm levels of pesticides. TBH, I'll be pretty impressed if this could identify different plastics or other relatively pure materials. It is certainly a nice idea though.
There's a reason IR spectroscopy has fallen by the wa
Re: (Score:2)
There's a reason IR spectroscopy has fallen by the wayside in chemistry - it doesn't give you enough information, and just hasn't kept up with other techniques. It's used for specific tasks, such as monitoring a reaction, but it's not a go-to analysis technique any more.
I couldn't disagree more (although one would say I'm somewhat biased on the applications of IR spectroscopy). First I know no research or production analytic lab without at least one IR spectrometer. In quality insurance they are also used a lot. For in-situ monitoring of reaction, IR spectrometer are generally not appropriate because to slow at sufficient spectral resolution. You can only monitor very slow reactions.
Maybe you are thinking of a specific branch, where other techniques are more appropriate or
Re: (Score:1)
We don't have one in our lab! My company makes functionalised materials (so solid state) but most of the synthesis and research we do is standard organic chem. GCMS, NMR and ICP do us just fine. We did test a reflectance IR instrument but never managed to get any useful data - in fairness that's probably partly due to lack of expertise.
Interesting that you mention IR not being suitable for reaction monitoring: Mettler's ReactIR has generated quite a bit of hype (well, perhaps 5-10 years ago) and is really q
Re: (Score:1)
According to their video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com], one of the uses is to detect the sweetness of certain fruits. The video shows them scanning an apple to determine the level of sugar. This would be useful if you are in the grocery store and want to pick the sweetest from among apples, peaches, etc. Do you think their tool is sufficient for this purpose? What about fruits with skins you do not eat like watermelon? Or, what about fruits like pomegranates? If their tool would not be sufficient, is t
Re: (Score:2)
[...]I have serious doubts this device has sufficient resolving power to do what they claim it can/would/should do. To identify chemical components, you need a minimum spectral resolution (depending on the species you want to identify). To do quantitative analysis, the requirements are event higher. [...]
So this device might be actually able differentiate between a block of cheese and an apple :-), (like suggested by the article photos), but expecting to be a smartphone CSI able to solve mysteries with a click of an app will lead to buyers' remorse.
That said, I believe the device producers are not trying to mislead potential buyers, but the media coverage of the device has been largely hyperbolic.
Re: (Score:1)
I had a tricorder app on my phone at one point. It did not do anything interesting (I seem to recall it used signal strength and GPS data to make numbers that meant nothing) but it was fun to pull out and play with. It served absolutely no function other than amusing me and bewildering the occasional onlooker.
I take issue with the cloud software (Score:2)
What happens when the company goes out of business or decides to stop supporting the product? I can also see the government compelling them not to reveal certain chemical signatures. Software should not be dictated from the "cloud". It needs to be users that are in control. Specifically I don't see a reason why we can't have the software and install it on our own servers if we wish to. So long as we have the option of our own servers I can then concede to using non personal cloud servers for processing spee
Re: (Score:2)
It shouldn't be terribly difficult to write some spectral analysis software for it, if you can figure out how to talk to their hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
Software should not be dictated from the "cloud". It needs to be users that are in control. Specifically I don't see a reason why we can't have the software and install it on our own servers if we wish to. So long as we have the option of our own servers I can then concede to using non personal cloud servers for processing speed.
Seems to me that's the the dev kit will get you. People will develop their own versions of the app to use a local or their own cloud database and let the user be dependent on the vendor.
This device seems to be very similar to TellSpec (Score:1)
These guys have been marketing a device that looks rather suspiciously like a spectrometer for inspecting food for a few years now:
http://tellspec.com/ [tellspec.com]
I've been following this for near two years now and was debating getting signed up on the beta program. The barrier for me has been the monthly service cost, expecting that the device may be rather limited without a good corpus of crowd-sourced data propping it up.
Re: (Score:1)
My thoughts exactly. I "purchased" one through indiegogo almost two years ago: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tellspec-what-s-in-your-food#/story To this day, still vaporware. Supposedly developer units are shipping soon.
Pocket spectrometer? (Score:2)
5 to 15mm? (Score:2)
I don't think most smartphones can even focus properly at those distances.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't think ...
You could have just stopped there. ;) I keed, I keed...
Anyhow, this will not be relying on the phone's camera I do not believe. It looks like it will be using an add-on device which has a specialist's camera (probably multi-lensed with different filters) instead. I am not, nor should I be considered, either an expert or a valid source of information other than observations. So, yeah, it should be a whole separate unit that is attached and used through an existing phone.
Thinking out a little further (Score:2)