Filed under: Hardware, Odds and ends, iPhone
A new accessory for your iPhone: a NASA-developed chemical sensor
What's better than a handful of sensors for determining if some hostile enemy has set off chemical weapons in a city? How about hundreds of thousands or millions of sensors? If research being done by NASA Ames Research Center under the Cell-All program in the US Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is taken into production, your next smartphone might contain chemical-sensing circuitry.A recent article in OnOrbit described a proof of concept that was developed by Jing Li, a scientist at Ames, and a group of other researchers. In order to test out the tiny nanosensor-based chemical sensing circuitry, Li and his team created a device that plugs into the dock port of an iPhone.
To quote the original post,
A newer version of the sensor has 64 nanosensors built-in and is less than 1 cm on a side. Isn't it cool that your iPhone is getting to be more like a Star Trek tricorder every day?The new device is able to detect and identify low concentrations of airborne ammonia, chlorine gas and methane. The device senses chemicals in the air using a "sample jet" and a multiple-channel silicon-based sensing chip, which consists of 16 nanosensors, and sends detection data to another phone or a computer via telephone communication network or Wi-Fi.
[via Gizmodo]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Drifter71 said 12:50PM on 11-13-2009
Cool.
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madla1 said 12:52PM on 11-13-2009
Oh boy. First fart apps, now fart detectors...
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Matt Jones said 2:38PM on 11-13-2009
Now, Twitter users everywhere can live the dream of posting EVERY time they fart!
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Ender said 2:47PM on 11-13-2009
Is it just me or did Apple in a keynote tout a whole bunch of extra dock adaptor peripherals like a blood pressure cuff? Are those ever going to come out?
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sjbonline said 6:50PM on 11-13-2009
Hey, isn't that the new mac mini on that plug-in?
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samuel said 8:39PM on 11-13-2009
Bones.
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ChicagoMolly said 9:48PM on 11-14-2009
WOOHOOO! It's getting more like a tricorder all the time!
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artifex said 2:12PM on 11-15-2009
Can't believe they have to plug it directly in to the port, even on a test bench.
They really should be using a port extender cable. But I guess nobody makes any?
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