So I'm not sure if I've stumbled across something useful or not.
I'm preparing to move into my new place; I've been traveling for the past few years which has prevented me from having any kind of long term garden. I'm excited to finally have the capacity to start my own garden of entheogens; my hope is to be able to contribute to the wealth of information here and collaborate with others on the Nexus community.
I've been lurking the analysis threads for a while now and I have to say the information here is absolutely fantastic. I would love to one day be able to test and analyze samples from my own garden. While I know there are a variety of other more accessible methods for doing so, just for fun I decided to look into how much it costs for used mass spectrometers. As expected almost every unit I found was way out of my price range, though I was able to find a few older machines for what seemed to be a more affordable price. Long story short I ended up coming across this website and was curious is anyone here was familiar with this project.
Public Lab is a collaborative effort aimed towards developing open source and DIY methods for "environmental exploration and investigation". They provide instructions as well as a premade kit for the construction of a DIY spectrometer and an infrared camera.
I figured the infrared camera/lens was pretty nifty and could be useful for many folks here, but what I'm really curious about is the spectrometer. Commercial grade spectrometers are expensive pieces of equipment inaccessible to most laypeople like myself. I figured that if this is applicable in any way to the research that the Nexus is engaged in it could be a valuable resource. I think it'd be awesome for more people here to be able to conduct their own tests and analyses both for safety and research purposes.
The DIY spectrometer is recommended for:
oil testing
detection of brightening agents in laundry
pesticides
sugar in red wine
olive oil adulterants
milkfat concentration
lycopene in tomatoes
atmostpheric spectra
concentration analysis (Beer’s Law)
flame spectroscopy
importing reference spectra
testing for environmental pollutants (soil, water, etc...)
They also say that it could be used for a variety of other applications and they encourage the community to share their own applications and results. The kit can also be upgraded to be more accurate and precise. I was wondering if this could be utilized at all for our needs here? Forgive me if this is a silly question, I'm just beginning to learn about analytical methods so my knowledge is lacking to put it lightly. My gut is telling me this isn't entirely useful, especially without additional equipment. From what I understand a mass spectrometer works by ionizing a sample and subjecting it to a magnetic field, which seems to be far beyond the capabilities of this DIY kit. But even so I thought I would share; this could be useful to a number of people for other applications.
Here is the link to order the spectrometer kit. Includes specs and other detailed info.
Here is the equivalent link for their infrared lens kit.
All infrared photography products here...
Full store here...
So what do you all think? Useful, not useful? Anyone familiar with this?
I'm preparing to move into my new place; I've been traveling for the past few years which has prevented me from having any kind of long term garden. I'm excited to finally have the capacity to start my own garden of entheogens; my hope is to be able to contribute to the wealth of information here and collaborate with others on the Nexus community.
I've been lurking the analysis threads for a while now and I have to say the information here is absolutely fantastic. I would love to one day be able to test and analyze samples from my own garden. While I know there are a variety of other more accessible methods for doing so, just for fun I decided to look into how much it costs for used mass spectrometers. As expected almost every unit I found was way out of my price range, though I was able to find a few older machines for what seemed to be a more affordable price. Long story short I ended up coming across this website and was curious is anyone here was familiar with this project.
Public Lab is a collaborative effort aimed towards developing open source and DIY methods for "environmental exploration and investigation". They provide instructions as well as a premade kit for the construction of a DIY spectrometer and an infrared camera.
I figured the infrared camera/lens was pretty nifty and could be useful for many folks here, but what I'm really curious about is the spectrometer. Commercial grade spectrometers are expensive pieces of equipment inaccessible to most laypeople like myself. I figured that if this is applicable in any way to the research that the Nexus is engaged in it could be a valuable resource. I think it'd be awesome for more people here to be able to conduct their own tests and analyses both for safety and research purposes.
The DIY spectrometer is recommended for:
oil testing
detection of brightening agents in laundry
pesticides
sugar in red wine
olive oil adulterants
milkfat concentration
lycopene in tomatoes
atmostpheric spectra
concentration analysis (Beer’s Law)
flame spectroscopy
importing reference spectra
testing for environmental pollutants (soil, water, etc...)
They also say that it could be used for a variety of other applications and they encourage the community to share their own applications and results. The kit can also be upgraded to be more accurate and precise. I was wondering if this could be utilized at all for our needs here? Forgive me if this is a silly question, I'm just beginning to learn about analytical methods so my knowledge is lacking to put it lightly. My gut is telling me this isn't entirely useful, especially without additional equipment. From what I understand a mass spectrometer works by ionizing a sample and subjecting it to a magnetic field, which seems to be far beyond the capabilities of this DIY kit. But even so I thought I would share; this could be useful to a number of people for other applications.
Here is the link to order the spectrometer kit. Includes specs and other detailed info.
Here is the equivalent link for their infrared lens kit.
All infrared photography products here...
Full store here...
So what do you all think? Useful, not useful? Anyone familiar with this?