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SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All

kickstarter.com

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Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All

#2

Post by ars »

Very cool idea, but I hate that it must have data connectivity to work. Not only that, they won't actually give users the raw scan results! You have to transmit them and then get the analyzed results only.

Reality is that many such services inevitably go under, and then your device is useless. Especially when the service is as compute intensive as this one sounds.

Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All

#6

Post by pjc50 »

Interesting that the first comments are slating this for being cloud-based; in this particular case I think that's like slating Google for being cloud based. The raw data will make sense to very few people without the very large database of "known" things to match against. And that large database will be continually updated as people try new things.

Having said that, I'm not sure who the target market really is. It's basically a Cool Science Toy. Educational use? But in that case maybe it would be nice to show the raw data just to give an impression of how it works.

Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All

#7

Post by sidcool »

My first reaction was : "That's amazing!!!". Indeed a very cool idea. A tiny spectrometer. I would be very much interesting in the details of the technology behind it and what kind of details it can find about the scanned objects.

Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All

#8

Post by djmdjm »

ars wrote: post #2

Very cool idea, but I hate that it must have data connectivity to work. Not only that, they won't actually give users the raw scan results! You have to transmit them and then get the analyzed results only. Reality is that many such services inevitably go under, and then your device is useless. Especially when the service is as compute intensive as this one sounds.

It's very likely that the Bluetooth protocol will be reverse engineered very shortly after launch anyway.

Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All

#9

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjc50 wrote: post #6

Interesting that the first comments are slating this for being cloud-based; in this particular case I think that's like slating Google for being cloud based. The raw data will make sense to very few people without the very large database of "known" things to match against. And that large database will be continually updated as people try new things. Having said that, I'm not sure who the target market really is. It's…

The problem is not with being based on external database - the problem is with that database being privately owned by startup, which is almost certain to disappear within a year or three, at which point the device you bought will be useless.

I'd personally be fine with cloud-based recognition if the database was open, free to copy and host locally.

That, and also not giving access to raw data pretty much kills 90% of possible uses for the devices, turning a cool piece of tech into another pretty much worthless gizmo.

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