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While initially skeptical myself, I found a bit of information on Consumer Physics' site stating that they use near-infrared spectroscopy. Doing a little initia

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#Agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-infrared_spectroscopy#Agr... http://www.intechopen.com/books/developments-in-near-infrared-spectroscopy/using-near-infrared-spectroscopy-in-agricultural-systems http://www.intechopen.com/books/developments-in-near-infrare...

endorphone 10y ago
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.
crispyambulance 10y ago
Of course its all "plausible" and we all yearn for a Star Trek Tricoder, but spectrometer measurements have to be taken under controlled conditions with careful calibration or else you're going to get garbage-in/garbage-out. That said, it sounds like harmless fun. But if you really care about accuracy, its not that hard to assess the quality of fruit and vegetables with your own senses, don't need a spectrometer/iphone contraption.

endorphone 10y ago

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.

crispyambulance 10y ago

Of course its all "plausible" and we all yearn for a Star Trek Tricoder, but spectrometer measurements have to be taken under controlled conditions with careful calibration or else you're going to get garbage-in/garbage-out. That said, it sounds like harmless fun. But if you really care about accuracy, its not that hard to assess the quality of fruit and vegetables with your own senses, don't need a spectrometer/iphone contraption.