Sunday, May 31, 2015

FrinGOe Unveils Consumer FT Spectrometer

FrinGOe announces a cheap Fourier Transform spectrometer of consumer applications. The optical part of the spectrometer is a passive add-on for iPhone or Raspberry Pi camera. The company's whitepaper explains how it works:

Regular FTIR spectrometer
Mach-Zehnder FTIR spectrometer with moving mirrors
Passive array of Mach Zehnder interferometers with
path difference fixed at different values.

"FrinGOe uses innovative crystal technology to create a low cost 2D array of Mach Zehnder Interferometers and patented optical configuration to map the array onto the camera sensor. This allows an all-passive and compact optical add-on (as small as 4mm by 4mm by 2mm) that can be mounted onto any imaging platforms such as a mobile phone camera, Raspberry Pi camera or other OEM devices." One of the prototypes of the FT spectrometer has a spectral resolution of ~1 nm @ 400nm wavelength.

FrinGOe on the back of iPhone 5s is switchable between spectroscopic
and imaging modes

In June, the company plans to launch FrinGOe at the Laser World of Photonics (Munich) exhibition and at the same time start an Indiegogo campaign to kick-start the mass production efforts. FrinGOe's Youtube video shows the spectrometer operation:

5 comments:

  1. Hi Vladimir, thanks for picking up FrinGOe in your article. We have a new video measuring the spectrum of red and green laser pointer. You can find the video here: https://youtu.be/eMkdurbgxs8

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  2. Would the frequency selectivity of the Bayer mask on the image sensor throw off the accuracy of the spectrometer?

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    Replies
    1. I guess they have done the calibration with iphone certain generation camera. with a different image sensor, they need to update the database, unless they have a on chip solution.

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    2. Spencer,
      Frequency selectivity of Bayer filters is ~100nm. Selectivity of Red Bayer filter is a wrong definition without IR filter overlapped, with that is ~200nm. If one compares it with the demonstrated LEDs, their selectivity ~35nm for B,G and ~57nm for R. Selectivity of FT spectrometer is much higher ~1nm but still loses a classic optical spectrometer with selectivity better than 0.1nm.
      GM

      Delete
  3. Hi Spencer, are you actually referring to the spectral resolution of the spectrometer? The current prototype is ~2nm resolution at wavelength of 400nm.

    ReplyDelete

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