A while back we had a thread about Tellspec, which raised a load of money on crowdfunding site Indiegogo (which seems to be doing its best to prove all the fears about potential crowdfunding scams absolutely justified) by promising to do the physically impossible.
Now we have a similar device being promoted on Kickstarter, except this time it looks as though it may actually be the real thing. From a previous thread on the subject which unfortunately had to be removed due to rule 6:
Basically, they're claiming to get a similar outcome to what Tellspec claimed, but using a method that is at least plausible, and with a team made up of actual scientists rather than nutjobs and marketers. The same site that has ripped apart Tellspec, Healbe and similar scams appears to approve, or at least notes that Consumer Physics are at least trying to be open and do things properly.
As far as I can tell it's still not quite a tricorder - it looks up a database of spectra rather than trying to figure everything out from scratch. They describe it as "Google for the physical environment", so obviously if you're trying to scan something unusual it's not going to be especially useful. But still, it sounds a pretty cool idea with all kinds of potential use if it actually does work.
One thing that particularly springs to mind is the ability of consumers to detect fraud. Alternative medicine has a huge problem with quality control - remedies that should be safe, albeit useless, can easily contain the wrong doses or even the wrong substances. Fraud with meat has been a big issue recently, with a worrying amount of food containing completely different animals from those claimed, often well past the point of simple contamination. Similar issues exist all over the place. Sometimes this is due to lack of regulation, sometimes it's simply that no enforcement agency can test absolutely everything. But a device that allows consumers to test if their burger is actually made of dog or that homeopathic pills contain anitbiotics, that would really be a pretty big deal.
Now we have a similar device being promoted on Kickstarter, except this time it looks as though it may actually be the real thing. From a previous thread on the subject which unfortunately had to be removed due to rule 6:
Quote:
Originally Posted by ben m (Post 9981488) I'll give them a chance. a) They're claiming to do NIR reflection spectroscopy---i.e., the (vaguely plausible) thing that Tellspec claims to do NOW, not the (never plausible) laser Raman that they pretended to claim to do when fundraising. There already are handheld-sized NIR spectrometers (Ocean Optics, etc.) at about the scale shown here. They need to shrink the technology *a little*, not a lot, relative to the state of the art. b) Their suggested uses are *limited domain* differentiation---much more in line with what we associate with NIR than Tellspec's fictional "scan anything and get all the trace ingredients". They're not saying "we'll identify anything anywhere" but rather (at least partly) "a homebrewer could train the device to monitor differences between batches" or "a recycler can train it to differentiate plastics" something like that. That's precisely the sort of thing NIR is in principle good at. c) Unlike the Tellspec team (ten New Age marketing people, one scientist) the team listed at ConsumerPhysics looks like the mix of specializations (and Ph.D.s and engineers and etc.) you need to develop a new spectroscopy instrument. |
Basically, they're claiming to get a similar outcome to what Tellspec claimed, but using a method that is at least plausible, and with a team made up of actual scientists rather than nutjobs and marketers. The same site that has ripped apart Tellspec, Healbe and similar scams appears to approve, or at least notes that Consumer Physics are at least trying to be open and do things properly.
As far as I can tell it's still not quite a tricorder - it looks up a database of spectra rather than trying to figure everything out from scratch. They describe it as "Google for the physical environment", so obviously if you're trying to scan something unusual it's not going to be especially useful. But still, it sounds a pretty cool idea with all kinds of potential use if it actually does work.
One thing that particularly springs to mind is the ability of consumers to detect fraud. Alternative medicine has a huge problem with quality control - remedies that should be safe, albeit useless, can easily contain the wrong doses or even the wrong substances. Fraud with meat has been a big issue recently, with a worrying amount of food containing completely different animals from those claimed, often well past the point of simple contamination. Similar issues exist all over the place. Sometimes this is due to lack of regulation, sometimes it's simply that no enforcement agency can test absolutely everything. But a device that allows consumers to test if their burger is actually made of dog or that homeopathic pills contain anitbiotics, that would really be a pretty big deal.
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