Star Trek's tricorder finally reaches the shops

[spot]

After a 2 year wait of a Kickstarter campaign which raised, I think, around $2m, in which I didn't participate, I just bought a "Scio molecular sensor".

It pairs with a smartphone, creates a visible to infra-red absorption spectrograph and compares it to an on-phone library of known materials, and displays the closest match.

It's the size of a small matchbox and it's dust-proof in a pocket. It has a Go button, a blue light to show it's active and a charger LED.

All the drug dealers in creation will use one instead of towing in a 40 year old addict to lick the product off his fingers and say This is Grade A stuff boss. The phone will say 35% Cocaine and the dealer will bargain accordingly. The world is a safer place.

The graphs are very reproducible, I'm extremely impressed. Until this arrived you needed a 20kg box attached to a USB port, disgracefully expensive quartz sample tubes and $8,000 at least for just the basic model. This pocket tricorder is a mere $300 and every child should have one.

The App originally said it would reference a world-master database to make a wider comparison, I do hope the makers implement that instead of relying on the local trimmed-down copy. I'm glad there's a DIY library extender for specialist topics.

The Australian Euthanasia Club, or whatever it's called, has a database add-on for Nembutal, so you can buy by post and know you're really going to die when you take it instead of waking up from a dose of Valium. It just shows how caring the world can be when it wants.

[Clodhopper]

So far I've mostly avoided mobile phones but if/when this becomes integral to them I will succumb. Especially if it opens like a proper Star Trek Tricorder. Sad, I know, but there are some things you don't grow out of.

[spot]

Clodhopper;1508242 wrote: if/when this becomes integral to them I will succumb


https://www.phone.consumerphysics.com/

Smartphones also run Googe Earth, the nearest thing we have to Star Trek Transporter technology. If the only thing a smartphone did was allow a five year old to drop the little yellow man on a dirt track and wander around the back streets of Kinshasa alone for half an hour without fear of kidnap then it would still be worth the price. It's a working videophone too. It tells me when to catch a bus to get to Perranporth before the first set starts, when I have a ticket for a beach concert. The Stranglers are playing in a couple of weeks. I have a ticket to see The Underground Hippy next month too. My phone has their latest album stored and it takes noise-cancelling headphones when I'm traveling. How can you not have a smartphone?

[Clodhopper]

...cos I'm a techno-twit.

In addition I don't run a car, reduce reuse recycle, compost, grow my own, now have a girlfriend who makes clothes...I'm becoming a caveman.

[Bruv]

How did we all manage without it ?

[spot]

Much guesswork and replaceable addicts.

[Bruv]

spot;1508256 wrote: Much guesswork and replaceable addicts.


May I be impertinent to ask, what your Scio molecular sensor will be employed for ?

[spot]

Educating a five year old. And educating me, naturally.

[Bruv]

spot;1508260 wrote: Educating a five year old. And educating me, naturally.


And to test if your apples are sweet enough ?

No more counterfeit rolling baccy for you in future then.

[Betty Boop]

Would that thingymajig tell me if there was the dreaded wheat or gluten in my food too? Could it save me days of being ill?

[spot]

You're affected by trace quantities, it's too small a difference for this sort of analyzer to notice.

What's needed is a molecular key that fluoresces if there's even a trace of gluten. The bit in your system that reacts so badly is a perfect key, so it's not as though nobody knows what it ought to consist of. Nobody's made a kit to use it yet. I think someone ought to.