Science! By Ryan Whitwam May. 5, 2014 5:28 pm
It’s smart to be wary of crowdfunding campaigns that make lofty promises — more than a few have ended up delivering products that didn’t meet the expectations of backers or never materialized at all. At first glance, the SCiO Kickstarter seems suspicious — it’s a handheld scanner that can identify the chemical makeup of whatever you point it at. It’s very similar to a number of other crowd-funded devices that have been called out as scams recently. However, there seems to be a real working prototype of this one, and its claims aren’t nearly as lofty as those fishy products.
SCiO from Consumer Physics is a miniaturized spectrometer that works in the near-infrared, not unlike much larger and more expensive units that already exist in labs around the world. The device itself is a few inches long and emits a blue light for several seconds to obtain a measurement. Basically, some of the light emitted by the scanner is absorbed by the target material, and the remaining reflected light tells us about the composition. You need to have the scanner right up against the surface you’re measuring, and the video demo shows some examples of blocking external light with a barrier — fairly common, but not universal with laboratory spectrometers.
So, you take a reading, and SCiO sends that data to your smartphone over Bluetooth and sends it to the cloud for analysis. You get the data back via an app telling you what the thing you scanned is made of, assuming the database has the correct spectrum cataloged. SCiO is being tested on pharmaceuticals, simple foods, and plants. The company is careful to point out SCiO is not a medical device. It won’t have the kind of accuracy necessary to detect trace levels of allergens or supposed toxic substances in your food. Anything detected with SCiO needs to be more than 1% of the material being scanned.
All the applications demoed so far are on pretty uniform materials, which makes sense given how spectrometers work. Speaking of the demos, real people who don’t work for Consumer Physics have gotten to try the prototype device, which is a little larger than the final version is likely to be. According to these early reports, it seems to work as advertised.
SCiO isn’t claiming the kind of precision you’d get with a big scientific instrument, but the device may very well be a usable portable spectrometer for consumers. Its claims aren’t outlandish, and Consumer Physics isn’t afraid to let people try it out. The pitch here is much more convincing than some similar products that make bizarre health claims or can’t even produce a believable demo. Definitely maintain your skepticism going in, but the usual red flags are absent here. Of course, that doesn’t mean SCiO will be delivered on time. This is still Kickstarter, after all.
SCiO has already raked in almost*three-quarters of a million dollars, and there’s still more than a month to go. If you want in, it’s going to cost $199 with delivery expected in January 2015.
More...
SCiO from Consumer Physics is a miniaturized spectrometer that works in the near-infrared, not unlike much larger and more expensive units that already exist in labs around the world. The device itself is a few inches long and emits a blue light for several seconds to obtain a measurement. Basically, some of the light emitted by the scanner is absorbed by the target material, and the remaining reflected light tells us about the composition. You need to have the scanner right up against the surface you’re measuring, and the video demo shows some examples of blocking external light with a barrier — fairly common, but not universal with laboratory spectrometers.
So, you take a reading, and SCiO sends that data to your smartphone over Bluetooth and sends it to the cloud for analysis. You get the data back via an app telling you what the thing you scanned is made of, assuming the database has the correct spectrum cataloged. SCiO is being tested on pharmaceuticals, simple foods, and plants. The company is careful to point out SCiO is not a medical device. It won’t have the kind of accuracy necessary to detect trace levels of allergens or supposed toxic substances in your food. Anything detected with SCiO needs to be more than 1% of the material being scanned.
All the applications demoed so far are on pretty uniform materials, which makes sense given how spectrometers work. Speaking of the demos, real people who don’t work for Consumer Physics have gotten to try the prototype device, which is a little larger than the final version is likely to be. According to these early reports, it seems to work as advertised.
SCiO isn’t claiming the kind of precision you’d get with a big scientific instrument, but the device may very well be a usable portable spectrometer for consumers. Its claims aren’t outlandish, and Consumer Physics isn’t afraid to let people try it out. The pitch here is much more convincing than some similar products that make bizarre health claims or can’t even produce a believable demo. Definitely maintain your skepticism going in, but the usual red flags are absent here. Of course, that doesn’t mean SCiO will be delivered on time. This is still Kickstarter, after all.
SCiO has already raked in almost*three-quarters of a million dollars, and there’s still more than a month to go. If you want in, it’s going to cost $199 with delivery expected in January 2015.
More...
