To be able to turn a smartphone into a portable spectrophotometer would be a pretty big breakthrough in field testing. There are definitely lots of instances where a baseline detection method for bacteria or toxins would be useful in determining water and food quality.
Since I’m primarily interested in detecting small molecules that exist naturally in high concentrations, this seems like it could be quite useful for detection in non-critical settings as well, though I probably wouldn’t trust it on medical equipment. It also might be nice for quick testing of surfaces before isolation procedures are performed to avoid interference, something I’ve dealt with quite a bit while working with RNA.
The only thing I’d like to see added would be a quantification feature, since they don’t mention one (though I didn’t watch the entire video, so correct me if I’m wrong there). If quatification were highly sensitive, I’d be sold, but sensitivity is key here.
http://www.cleanroomtechnology.com/news/article_page/Test_for_toxins_in_the_field_using_a_smartphone_app/90979//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js
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Man!I hope they have a free version…
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Wow!thats freakin cool!I don’t know how much a photonic crystal cost but with some know how it’s definitely diy territory I’m assuming…I once took a dvd player bubble lookin optic piece out and adhered it to my s3 with a little saliva and got some really cool results …..a far cry from a spectrometer..it would be cool if you could get a spectrum of distant objects such as clouds and what not by taking a photo…
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