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> 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

> 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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Are there competitors/shanzhaied versions out yet? A cursory google search of MEMS nir specs turns up a few hits.
  - hgchoi 10y ago
    Not shanzhaied, but another alternative spectrum sensor for VIS/NIR(390nm - 1000nm) is nanolambda NSP32. www.nanolambda.net
    - dejv 10y ago
      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.
  - dejv 10y ago
    There is even Si-Ware FTIR MEMS sensor. It is quite pricey (more then 1K USD) and resolution is not that great, but pricey will drop eventually and it might be good enough for some applications.
grizzles 10y ago
There is another approach worth considering. The German research group Fraunhofer has come up with a good idea to enhance the spectroscopic capabilities of commodity smartphone cameras by shining light from the display onto the object being scanned. You can read about it here: http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/press/2017/app-reveals-constituents.html http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/press/2017/app-reveals-const... The healthtech company I work for has expressed interest to CP about using the SCiO phone for a project. If that doesn't work out, we might replicate this work by Fraunhofer. We're already looking into it. And since it's not core to our business, if we do, we'll open source it too.

dejv 10y ago

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 10y ago
Are there competitors/shanzhaied versions out yet? A cursory google search of MEMS nir specs turns up a few hits.
- hgchoi 10y ago
  Not shanzhaied, but another alternative spectrum sensor for VIS/NIR(390nm - 1000nm) is nanolambda NSP32. www.nanolambda.net
  - dejv 10y ago
    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.
- dejv 10y ago
  There is even Si-Ware FTIR MEMS sensor. It is quite pricey (more then 1K USD) and resolution is not that great, but pricey will drop eventually and it might be good enough for some applications.

grizzles 10y ago

There is another approach worth considering. The German research group Fraunhofer has come up with a good idea to enhance the spectroscopic capabilities of commodity smartphone cameras by shining light from the display onto the object being scanned. You can read about it here: http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/press/2017/app-reveals-constituents.html http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/press/2017/app-reveals-const... The healthtech company I work for has expressed interest to CP about using the SCiO phone for a project. If that doesn't work out, we might replicate this work by Fraunhofer. We're already looking into it. And since it's not core to our business, if we do, we'll open source it too.