DIY Spectrometer

[gradolabs]

JUST WOW !! :jaw:

This is like... the coolest thread for us science nerds! Thank you!

Nice to meet you groffuwiwi. I nerd out all the time here on AFN. Keeps me centered. Thanks for the +rep.

 

[Groff]

hey grado,

Gas Chromat. is used to determine cannabis constituents... A decent system is rarely found for less than 15k... how do you reckon the specificity of a DIY compare?

Seriously? A DIY home made gas chromatograph !? Where can I follow this project?

 

[gearbear2]

I can recommend some stuff from the 90's for you to break... pm me for suggestions.

:roflcry:

 

[gradolabs]

hey grado,

Gas Chromat. is used to determine cannabis constituents... A decent system is rarely found for less than 15k... how do you reckon the specificity of a DIY compare?

Seriously? A DIY home made gas chromatograph !? Where can I follow this project?

They are programming arduino microcontrollers with spectral signatures. So you put a small hydrated sample in a vial, the system shoots it with a laser and analyses the reflected light. Lemme find you a video.

http://www.creative-technology.net/MAKE/Spectrometer_demo.mov

 

[JM]

that is sweet!!!

those kind of parts are available here:

www.sparkfun.com

 

[gradolabs]

that is sweet!!!

those kind of parts are available here:

www.sparkfun.com

I can't go on that website because I will destroy my bank account. Repeatedly.

 

[Groff]

Oh MAN !! You have got to be sh*tting me!!

I spent the entire x-mas holidays looking into Arduino to learn the basics!

I'm soooooooooo doing this...

grado, you involved somehow? This is the coolest thing ever!

 

[gradolabs]

Oh MAN !! You have got to be sh*tting me!!

I spent the entire x-mas holidays looking into Arduino to learn the basics!

I'm soooooooooo doing this...

grado, you involved somehow? This is the coolest thing ever!

I'm more concerned with spectral analysis, and feeding the right PAR spectrum to my ladies, but yeah this stuff does give me a :bone:.

Sample analysis is cool, but without an established data base the novelty just isn't there. If you paid me to catalogue chemicals all day I totally would, don't get me wrong. I think it would be fun and globally beneficial.

I'm on the look out for software to help sort out spectral maps such as the one I produced. Visual inspection is one thing, but I can't tell the difference between 440 and 460 nanometer blue yet. Maybe one day I could eyeball it, but it would be nice to have a calibrated program. Anyway no matter how you slice it, there's tons of work to do!

 

[JM]

I can't go on that website because I will destroy my bank account. Repeatedly.

you too? I have a whole list of websites I've had to blacklist myself from in the interest of my finical solvency...

 

[gradolabs]

Ugh. I'm getting perfect results from incandescent and flourescent light sources, but LED's are giving me trouble, at least without a diffusing material, in my case a thin sheet of white packing foam. And even then the pictures I'm getting need to be heavily color corrected because of light leaks in the spectrograph and who knows what else, maybe cause there's 50 individual leds. *sigh*

But I could see the clear definition between the thin blue stripe, then nothing, then a stripe across orange red and a huge red band. Makes sense because the ratio of red to orange to blue is 7:1:1 on my light. Anyway, back to work.