I've been tracking low-cost spectrometers on AliExpress, but when I come across these ~$300 spectrophotometers, that closely resembles Ocean Optics' Czerny-Turner optical layout, I am very impressed.

There are so many budget friendly portable spectrometers available, I thought I'd post some photos of when I opened one, an hopocolor HPSC330, to replace the battery and recalibrate it afterwards. It seems to use a crosses Czerny-Turner geometry with a linear CCD

1/3 We just turned a $25 fitness tracker into a water quality monitoring device (Colorx). The results are now published. doi.org/10.3390/s251... This is a follow-up of our ODX paper where we hacked a #fitnesstracker for bacterial growth monitoring. #WaterQuality #Sensors #odx

PIS IN SPACE! Today's video on CubeSats was over a year in the making—and deals with two of my favorite things: Raspberry Pis, and space! Also making a special guest appearance is Gabe from saveitforparts, using SDR to track sats: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvN3...

HELL YES. Proof of concept for PWM (Pulse Wave Modulation) dimming of an inductive LED using a MOSFET as the gate! This isn’t the final pulse cycle - I’ll tweak that tomorrow, but it’s getting the full brightness and doing the dimming seamlessly! Woohoo!

Back for a little while here, I tried this ‘starter pack’ for photonics & optics people: anyone else can follow up to 50 people at the click of a button: go.bsky.app/QrtPj7R. Put your name below and I will add you to the pack.

1/8 🧵 Update on the Pocket #Spectrometer project. Been working on upgrading from the AS7341 to AS7343 sensor. The #AS7341 worked well but only had 9 channels. The #AS7343 offers 12 channels which should be better for #colorimetric analysis. #OpenSource 💡

Our paper, "A gradient atmospheric model reveals enhanced radiative cooling potential and demonstrates the advantages of broadband emitters", is now online in Laser & Photonics Reviews. The work was led by Yeonghoon Jin onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🧪💡

📢 #Postdoc opportunity! Join our team through Sustain-FIT Marie Curie fellowships for cutting-edge gas sensing technology 💡. 3-year funded position with industry secondment. We are happy to support your application through MTU! DM with project idea + CV. lnkd.in/e2GtiY3m

Only two days left to apply for this excellent opportunity to come and work with our Centre for Advanced Photonics & Process Analysis (CAPPA), MTU, Ireland. See details here: www.linkedin.com/posts/centre...

We’re hiring 4 Marie Skłodowska-Curie #PhD fellows in the PROTEMIC network — combining integrated photonics, mid-IR lasers, and protein spectroscopy for real-time, label-free protein. Deadline is very close, apply soon. Details : protemic.eu

Congratulations to the Biomanufacturing Group at ICGEB for winning a best exhibit prize at Maker Faire Trieste yesterday! 🏆 Their award-winning exhibit featured a number of OpenFlexure Microscopes, and aimed at help make biology accessible to everyone. 🔬

Anyone have @Arxiv account that can kindly endorse me? For Physics-Optics 💡 (Endorsement Code: M9IJFY), for Instrumentation 🔬 (Endorsement Code: QMHGJO)

📢 #Postdoc opportunity! Join our team through Sustain-FIT Marie Curie fellowships for cutting-edge gas sensing technology 💡. 3-year funded position with industry secondment. We are happy to support your application through MTU! DM with project idea + CV. lnkd.in/e2GtiY3m

Currently preparing 10 #DIYNAFLUOR kits for grade 10 students to assemble as a part of a science outreach program run by my institute. They will use the DIYNAFLOUR to quantify fluorescent nanoparticles they get to synthesize. (Wish I got to do this when I was 15. 😅 🦕)

Working on a web app that works with both mobiles and desktop. Follow this space for more updates on this #spectrophotometer 💡 bsky.app/profile/chin...

Hello 💡community, recently I saw a post most likely on LinkedIn comparing different #FDTD softwares, both open source and commercial ones. It’s like a table. If anyone finds it please post it here.

1/14: As a DIY enthusiast who loves #spectrometers and💡, I am excited to share the story of LaoKang, a Chinese maker who turned a #DIY hobby project into a €67 #spectroscopy product. His "Garden Spectrometer" is making spectroscopy accessible by bringing a €1000+ tool for under €67 ($75)🧵👇.

This is so cool

If you are in Europe, get this cute microscope for just €5 at #smythtoys. It has illumination, color filters, multiple lenses, and prepared slides. I'm modifying it with an #ESP-CAM and scanning stage to make automated #diy scanning microscope.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The project (FIEVel) in this image is cool. They used sensor in optical mouse to get velocity. arxiv.org/abs/2410.23176

Look at those lil flags spin! We can now control up to 8 syringe pumps off two UART lines on the ESP32 board. Comes complete with a web app to adjust flow rate, turns pumps on and off, and runs sequences. #automateAllTheThings

Stage Wars - Episode 1: How fast is your microscope XY stage? Does it matter? -> Here I race 3 very different stages over a 384 well plate to get an average time per move: 1) Lead screw motor 7mm/s: 0.959s 2) Piezo linear motor 120mm/s: 0.436s 3) Magnetic linear motor 750mm/s: 0.294s So about 3x?

1/6 🧵 Excited to share Pocket Spectrometer V2! After positive feedback on the first version of pocket spectrometer. I've made significant improvements (hardware+software) while keeping what worked well with the V1 #OpenSource #Spectrometer #STEM 💡 bsky.app/profile/chin...

We have 4 new post-doc openings in our CAPPA research group at MTU. Very interesting projects including meta optics 💡. Deadline is 24th Jan lnkd.in/emKyJKbg www.mtu.ie/vacancies #HiringNow #Photonics #Optics #ImagingSystems #ResearchOpportunities #MTU

Our fully 3D-printed microscope is featured in @newscientist.bsky.social www.newscientist.com/article/2462...

PhD Opportunities! Apply soon! Deadline 31st January. EU-funded MSCA doctoral network PROTEMIC is now recruiting 12 PhD candidates for research in integrated spectroscopy for protein analysis. apply here: protemic.eu/apply/ #Jobs #PhDposition #academia #Research

A Preprint for our ~$40 USD, open source, 3D printed DNA Fluorometer, the #DIYNAFLUOR, has just been posted to bioRxiv outlining its performance and applications for #eDNA analysis!🦕🧪🧬 A big thanks to all the co-authors! Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Git tinyurl.com/yfh33dsx #science

Plants play a LOT of clever tricks with light (beyond that little miracle that is photosynthesis). If the topic interest you, there is a #PhD position open to work on it with Dr. Rox Middleton (a very bright young researcher at @uniofbath.bsky.social) #PhDjobs botphot.com/wp-content/u...

This is neat

(1/6) A 💡🧵 about a recent (open access) paper that reveals how certain seashells engineered natural windows to capture sunlight - similar to how a greenhouse works. A fascinating story of natural engineering from @reallymccoy.bsky.social's team www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/7 Just read a fascinating paper by @tawfiquehasan.bsky.social‬ breaking a fundamental spectrometer trade-off between resolution & sensitivity using metasurfaces. They demonstrated this working in super-challenging conditions - even doing astronomy through clouds! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our work in Science Advances on #BIC #metasurface spectrometers overcomes resolution-sensitivity trade-off. We achieve high light throughput, ideal for ultra-low-light applications like fluorescence & astrophotonic spectroscopy. doi.org/10.1126/scia...

These are so helpful for most of the physics students as well as teachers.

💡 AMS Osram & Fraunhofer's headlight design wins Deutscher Zukunftspreis 2024! The headlight is a 25,600-LED matrix that be effectively a video projector. Currently, it displays safety warnings etc. May be we can watch Netflix on the road soon 🤷‍♂️ www.wileyindustrynews.com/en/news/ams-...

New preprint! "All-passive upconversion imaging of incoherent near-infrared light at intensities down to 50 nW/cm^2" arxiv.org/abs/2411.18707 🧪💡 This was a large collaborative work led by Rabeeya Hamid in our group, in collaboration with Dan Congreve's group at Stanford, and supported by DARPA

1/6 🧵 I'm building what might be the smallest #opensource #spectrometer with an easy to use UI! I call it a pocket spectrometer. Combining #M5StickC (~$20) with AS7341 sensor (~$16). My goal? A complete spectrometer that is barely larger than a sample cuvette itself.