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 pi

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.