DIY Spectrometer prototype (via PublicLab & Kickstarter)
Have you ever wanted to figure out exactly what minerals and chemicals are in your drinking water? Or maybe you are wondering what exactly justifies the hundred-dollar bottle of wine compared to the yellow tail. One of the most accurate methods to answering these questions is by spectrometry, where one can identify unknown substances by analyzing the light they absorb.
Spectrometers can cost thousands of dollars and can be difficult to operate, but their wide spread use, especially following the open source model, could develop immense benefits in creating a library of spectral fingerprints of endless substances. Public Laboratories, an open research community, is now embarking on achieving this task. Jeffrey Yoo Warren has developed DIY spectrometer kits that aim to bring spectrometry to the main stream.
Public Labs has launched a Kickstarter where they offer a $35 DIY spectrometer kit that fits inside a VHS box (the desktop version), a $10 DIY paper spectrometer attachment for Android phones (along with an experimental app), a more durable 3D printed cell phone spectrometer attachment, as well as a $300 countertop spectrometer for more serious research. Along with all the devices, they are offering free open-source software, found at spectralworkbench.org, to calibrate, collect, analyze, compare and share data.
The kits have a range of 400-900 nanometers and a resolution as high as 3 nm depending on how well you put the kit together. The kits are simple. The desktop, VHS box version, requires only black paper, a piece of a DVD-R, electrical tape and an HD USB webcam (along with the VHS box of course). Step-by-step instructions are available at the publiclaboratory.org website.
Public Lab members have already used the device to identify unknown dyes in “free and clear” laundry detergent and even analyze wines! The group wants to collect as much data from as many people as possible to build a wiki-style library to automatically identify things like crop diseases, contaminants in household products and even analyze substances like olive oils, coffee and homebrewed beer. Warren is unsure what substances can be analyzed or what methods work better, but this is something that will hopefully be clearer once masses of people conduct their own experiments and share their results.
Nothing like organizing individual people to map seemingly endless and unknown landscapes.
Cabe