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by jamal-kumar 1500 days ago
I've been wanting a cheap, no-cloud raman spectrometer in my pocket for a while now.

Like something that can plug into something as universal as an audio jack on a phone, reflecting the laser back into its built in camera. I know there was some options out there that were cloud-based but I want one simply lets us interpret the samples and their readings ourselves with lab device quality output.

DIY stuff like this is ultra cool but it's like miniaturize-able for sure, and something you can run with open source software.

I know it's around the corner, I've read about it. It's like the next killer feature for new cell phones already. [1] Making it open source so some corporations who are doing cloudy things with your spectrometer data is definitely an international research security imperative.

[1] https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0046281

1 comments

I don't think smartphone manufacturers are incentivized to put better, cooler sensors into them; unless those sensors can be used to better spy on you, which I don't think a spectrometer can be.
Ever hear of drugs before?