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from the that-much-closer-to-a-tricorder dept.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11022/scio-sensor-added-to-smartphone
I first saw Consumer Physics' SCiO handheld scanner a couple of years ago and was impressed by its ability to identify materials by scanning and analyzing their chemical composition. In the intervening years, Consumer Physics has partnered with Analog Devices to increase the sensor's accuracy and reduce its size, and at CES 2017, the company announced the first smartphone with an integrated SCiO sensor, making this technology even easier to carry and use.
[...] The SCiO sensor uses near-infrared spectroscopy to identify a material's molecular content. By illuminating an object with a broadband light source and using the spectrometer, a type of optical sensor, to break the reflected light into its constituent components, SCiO's signal processing algorithms compare the reflected light's wavelengths to the original emission to create a spectral fingerprint. This technique works because molecules will only absorb photons at certain energy levels, which means specific wavelengths will be missing or attenuated in the reflected light.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 13 2017, @03:23AM
Oh, you mean like a prism?
IR spectroscopy is a fuzzy science, at best. Of the literally billions of chemical compounds on Earth alone, you can identify and differentiate a few dozen at best. It has its uses, but high tech super capable wizardry it is not.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 13 2017, @07:46AM
You only need a few to get some interesting use cases. Maybe it could replace the need for original and specific gravity readings for homebrewing. Or allow date rape drug detection. Or allow you to screen pharma drugs you got from India or recreational drugs you got from a dealer. Or check if there is lead in paint or BPA in bottles. Not saying it can do all of this, but if you shrink it to the smartphone level you will get an enthusiastic community of people checking everything out there.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 13 2017, @01:34PM
It might do all these things, but it will do them with a binary "I think so" or "I think not" answer that will have significant false positive and false negative rates. So, if you're looking for roofies in a drink, will you be satisfied that the test gives false positives 15% of the time - causing you to incorrectly assume that 1/6 people you're socializing with is trying to take advantage of you? And worse still, will you be satisfied that the test does NOT detect the drug 15% of the time it is there - including cases where people who know about the test can apply countermeasures to mast the presence of the drug?
If it can detect lead in paint, that would be less subject to "active camouflage," but: A) IR spectroscopy I have worked with is much better at detecting/distinguishing organic compounds with relatively low boiling points, and B) even lead paint gets painted over - you'd need to sand down to the base material and test all the layers of paint to get a meaningful test.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 13 2017, @01:56PM
No, I THINK NOT.
Here is the new video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaQBCXojNJo [youtube.com]
Here's an older one where they ID Advil, Ibuprofen on stage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtT7dsWb3ng [youtube.com]
I think there is another one where they point it as whiskey and it breaks down the composition of it. Not sure if that was a mockup or real.
Anyway, this technology seems far more capable than you give it credit for.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 13 2017, @06:08PM
The stuff I worked with was also quite impressive in demonstrations - behind the scenes where you saw how little difference there was between compound A and compound B - as compared to the noise floor, that's where my skepticism comes from.
Conventional mass spectrometers that vaporize a sample, charge it and feed it through a magnetic field - those are pretty impressive (though not as impressive as crime shows make them out to be in the fictional forensics labs.) Ultrasensitive (14+bits per channel) multispectral cameras can do some shockingly impressive things like take your pulse rate from the color changes in your skin from across the room. Reflective IR spectroscopy is more of the same, more resolution than we're accustomed to, over a wider color gamut, but, basically, they are identifying materials by their color. I can't help but think of all the chemical compounds that are identified a "presents as a grainy white powder" - adding some additional spectral analysis bands beyond RGB improves that situation, but it does not make it miraculously better for all things.
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