SCiO - Your Own Handheld Sixth Sense

Faye Prior | 2014-06-24 04:56:44

A new product has come to my attention, and it reminds me of that sonic screwdriver that Doctor Who carries around with him everywhere.

SCiO looks like a little USB stick, and when you point it in the direction of an object, it will scan it and tell you its chemical composition via your smart phone. At first this sounds a tad boring, but the applications of SCiO are quite cool.

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Have you ever found yourself googling how to tell when an avocado is ripe? Get rid of the guesswork, scan your avocado with the peel still on and SCiO will tell you how ripe it is.

Do you find nutritional labels confusing? Scan your food and SCiO will give you the simple version straight away.

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For the gardeners amongst us, SCiO can tell us about the health and well being of our beloved plants, and the quality of our soil. It can even let us know how hydrated our plants are. I possess no gardening knowledge and cannot verify the likelihood of this accuracy.

I was watching a documentary just last night about how medications are being sold over the internet containing unlisted and dangerous ingredients. Of course, nobody reading this blog would be buying illegal medications over the internet, but if you’re just curious you can scan your prescription medications or supplements and SCiO will tell you exactly what’s in it. On the other hand, this could speed up the verification of illegal substances for the police force.

The cool thing is that these are just SCiO’s initial applications, the more people that use it the better it will get, and in the future you will be able to update your SCiO to scan items that it couldn’t previously do so like cosmetics, diamonds, and anything else that intrigues you. In the future you’ll be able to scan yourself and see how dehydrated you really are.

SCiO will be with us in August 2014, available for pre-order at $149 (£90).

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Sources

http://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-sixth-sense-a-pocket-molecular-sensor-fo?ref=card