Taste and smell are already pretty good at this in the noisy background that we live in. I'd really like to see how this works out in practice and if they achieve any degree of accuracy. Labs are labs for a reason, it's to reduce the number of variables you have to contend with while trying to read experimental data from sensors.
SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#32Holy shit it's a tricorder.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#33Upvote if this reminds you of "The SmellMaster 9000" from Richie Rich.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#34Very 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.
I second that! It's an unnecessary date of expiry for hardware. You see that in every fitness armband and more and more apps. In two years ahead it could end up as a useless piece of electronics. In the past we used cloud features for offline tracking in AR applications because an iPhone 3GS wasn't capable of real time pose reconstruction. But today it seems more like a lock-in and a way to collect data. A quad-core…
"In two years ahead it could end up as a useless piece of electronics."
I would argue your point is moot. How old is the average, working smartphone? When did you replace your desktop, your flat screen?
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#35Very 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.
Unfortunately this did not happen with most fitness trackers. There's no successful reverse engineering of Fitbit's, Misfit's or Jawebone's Bluetooth protocol yet. Although the user base and interest may be much higher than that of spectrometers.
I joined the work on reverse engineering Fitbit's protocol but the encryption isn't hacked yet.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#36Does anyone have an email address to contact them directly? I'm concerned this might be a scam and I want to ask them a few in depth questions and I'd rather not be forced to do that through kickstarter or twitter.
Knowing the people behind this, I don't think it's a scam. They have a good staff, so I think they are certainly trying to make this a reality. Are they "hustling their MVP" in startup speak? Maybe, I don't know, I never saw the product (nor did I ask to). Are these people scammers? Absolutely not, to the best of my knowledge.
So if you know these people, why not give their e-mail address to InclinedPlane? :).
@InclinedPlane, if you get any response from them I (and probably many other HNers) would be interested in reading both the questions and the answers.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#37Very 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.
Probably - BLE is usually very easy to reverse engineer.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very good note about the goal price. To me, more than anything, that suggests that this was designed to be intentionally misleading.
It's a common Kickstarter practice to set intentionally low goals. It makes the project seem more achievable to those pledging before the goal is met, it makes the project seem more successful mid-campaign as it exceeds the goal within a short time, and you can later brag to the press and potential customers about exceeding the target goal by hundreds of percents or more. Look at all the successful projects of late,…
Right, Kickstarter is more of a method of advertising than anything else at this point.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#39I wonder if it could tell you the level of bacteria to determine freshness for example?
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting that your comment was voted down! How many backers have ever done any spectroscopy? For that matter, how many of those commenting here have done any serious spectroscopy? I have to agree, this seems very misleading.
I did not down vote, but maybe it is because there is no extra information. Two people have mentioned the possibility of a scam, but there is no additional information as to what indicates that it might be. I don't know enough about chemistry to make an educated guess. It would be nice to know why others think this may be the case.
All the other pocket-scanner devices appear to be scams, and this one doesn't have anything to distinguish itself from those.
I'll find a few links.
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668156#up_7668688
Different device http://pando.com/2014/04/04/revealed-healbe-isnt-indiegogos-...