Want to know how nutritious your food is or wondering if your plant needs water? A new gadget can help!
A Tel Aviv-based company is developing a device that scans items, such as food, plants and medication, within seconds and sends the information to your smartphone.
The device will come with apps that deliver macro nutrient values (calories, fats, carbohydrates, and proteins), produce quality, ripeness, and spoilage analysis for various foods, including cheeses, fruits, vegetables, sauces, salad dressings, cooking oils, and more.
The device, called SCiO, can also identify and authenticate medication in real-time by cross-checking a pill's molecular makeup with a database of medications.
It also analyses moisture levels in plants and tell users when to water them.
SCiO is actually a miniature spectroscope. It works by shining near-infrared light on materials, exciting their molecules in the process.
By analysing the light that's reflected off those vibrating molecules, it's reportedly possible to identify them by their unique optical signature, and thus determine the chemical composition of the material, 'Gizmag' reported.
An accompanying app sends its readings to the cloud, where algorithms process the data in real time. The results appear on the phone's screen within a matter of seconds.
The company, Consumer Physics, is currently raising funds for its commercial production, through Kickstarter.
