Pocket sensor Scio tells you the chemical makeup of foods

  • 06 May 2014

If you are obsessed with getting the sweetest watermelon in the supermarket but don't want to squeeze every one, or distrust all calorie counts everywhere, this device is for you. These are just two of the infinite possibilities that Scio affords you, according to its creators, a team of chemists, software engineers, nutritionists, material scientists and many more. Because what Consumer Physics has created with Scio is a universal molecular reader for everything.

Unsurprisingly, it's wowed the Kickstarter community and has smashed its $200,000 target, raking in $879,673 with 40 days to go. "Imagine if there was a way to know which watermelon is sweeter, when that avocado is going to ripen, how many calories, carbs or proteins are in a shake, how your plants are doing," says Consumer Physics cofounder Damian Goldring in the Kickstarter pitch. "Imagine if there was a way to know the chemical makeup of everything you come into contact with."

It's no small ask, but the team believes it has nailed the feat in just three years by bringing together a multidisciplinary R&D team that has shrunk down a lab spectrometer -- usually a hefty piece of equipment with a price tag to match in the thousands -- using low cost optics technology and advanced signal processing algorithms.

Right now there is no published cost, but as an example those who achieved Super Earlybird status by pledging $149 will get a Scio device and access to any supporting apps released in the next two years. It's possible the company will fund itself via these sorts of apps, which will no doubt grow as the database of molecular material the public collects, grows.

Users tap the device on the organic matter they want to read, it uploads that reading to Consumer Physics' database on the cloud where an algorithm works out the quantities and sends the analysis back to a smartphone. You can do all this without logging in to a Scio account, or log in to track your history or share results across social media. For now there are apps for scanning food, medicine and plants, but as consumers add to the database and developers get hold of Scio's kit, the expectation is more will follow. "The bigger our community gets, the more data Scio will have about different materials and this goes right back to our community of users," writes the team on the Kickstarter page.

Scio works by shrinking down traditional near-infrared spectroscopy, which is used to measure how molecules vibrate and interact with light. This is where the optics come in. The device shines a light on the sample and collects the reflections. By using low-cost optics, the team says its sensor can be mass-produced. It communicates with your smartphone via Bluetooth and delivers a result in seconds. You can see just how fast the process is in this video, where Goldring holds the sensor against an apple, some cheese and a pill for just two seconds before the app lights up with a result.

The sensor IDs exactly what pill is being presented, rather than just giving a break down of its chemical contents. But anything can be tested. In the Kickstarter video the device is also used on a glass of wine, a plant and a car tire.

It's taken several years and experts from MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Harvard, Wiezmann Institute, The Technion, and Tel-Aviv University to create Scio. Now, the team wants funding to start manufacturing after creating the first prototype last year.

Right now, the piece of hardware sounds phenomenal if it works as the team claims. We'll reserve judgement until it's in our palms and zapping the calorific lunches at the Wired.co.uk offices. If it does work to the degrees of accuracy being promised, the possibilities for tending to crops, pharmaceutical tests or even just learning more about the world around you, are endless. "You don't have to be a scientist, you just have to follow your curiosity, and every time you scan you're helping to build the world's first database of matter," says collaborator Nitzan Waisberg, formerly of Stanford's d.school. "It has applications for research, medicine, education, the food system and environment."