I'm sure that a few of our regular viewers will be surprised to see that I now have a co-host for this channel, but I do want to thank Max for his amazing contribution to this tiny, non-monetized channel.
Cheerio Posh Arthur, you are looking very appropriately toff indeed 🤖🎩 If I may, I can offer some insight into your spectral analysis of these light sources that you have. The 532nm green laser pointer has a peak at 820nm because this is the wavelength of the GaAs laser diode used to pump the Nd:YVO4 crystal inside which then lases at the fundamental neodymium line at 1064nm, and which THEN is frequency doubled by a potassium titanyl phosphate crystal to 532nm green. Also, your violet diode laser at 22:00 and your red laser at 20:30 are direct diode lasers, there is no pumping of a secondary lasing medium. The line you see at 820nm for the violet laser is just a second order diffraction line, but the small peak at 750nm for the red laser is not. The higher order diffraction peaks will always be at exactly whole single digit multiples of the fundamental line. I suspect the line at 750nm for your red laser, and the small peak at 622nm for your 532nm green laser, AND the small peak at 500nm for your 410nm violet laser are simply an unwanted internal Fresnel surface reflection off the first side of the couple mm thick DVD being used as a diffraction grating on the "Garden" spectrometer. Notice how they only appear on the Garden, and they're always offset 90nm from the brightest peak. Your analysis of the 450nm laser is accurate. I wonder if it is possible to remove the phosphor from a CFL source like that by immersing the tube in an ultrasonic cleaner bath, which then could be used to observe the mercury lines in complete isolation, as from an uncoated germicidal bulb. Pip pip old chap. Looking forward to part 2.
@@Muonium1 Hi and thank you very much for the detailed explanation. Actually a few other viewers have helped me with this too. Max, Arthur and myself are always pleased to be learning, even by mistakes. Far too many YT creators are very resistant to corrections (Veritasium comes to mind), so thank you for your help!
One additional request for the TLM-2. Have software available for Linux systems. There are millions of Raspberry Pi 5/4/..., Orange Pi 5 Plus, etc systems that amateur and professional scientists use daily. Those interested in atmospheric and astronomical physics/sciences, meteorologists, climatologists and just STEM students and programs that can use the TLM-2 to do research with the small cheap microcomputer systems. If you go open source, you would get 1,000s of programmers to come up the best software that would ordinarily cost millions of dollars (in any currency). Even setup a web page for a repository and competition. The company could come up with a cash prize for the best software submitted for open source and sharing with the Universe at large. Go big and sell a lot of hardware. In my humble opinion. Submitted for your consideration. This could be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Imagine not just offering Linux support, but fully embracing an open-source ecosystem that not only supports these systems but becomes a cornerstone of global collaboration. You could position the TLM-2 as the essential tool for anyone passionate about environmental monitoring, astronomy, or even cutting-edge climate science - and then expand this to other fields of research. This would open the door to users you may not have considered: marine biologists monitoring oceanic weather, urban planners using microclimate data for smart cities, and even educators incorporating real-time data collection into their STEM curricula.
Woah, I had to check to be sure this was the channel I thought it was. I'm all for trying new styles and approaches. Glad 'Posh' Arthur wasn't fired. His dry humor is important.
@@project-326 there is an SDK, I got the document from their website using my product number, it's very likely the same protocol. Can share if desired, just let me know of a contact address.
Haha i truly don't have a lot of confidence that they can write good software. SDK or hardware interfacing open documentation would allow some interesting uses. Someone needs a monitor calibrator? Might turn out better than any other.
@@SianaGearz I also have a fairly low confidence, their core team is basically scientists, what they need to get to market is more engineers. Its the classic start-up problem...
VERY interesting! Instant new subscriber with the bell clicked (I never do that 😮) You might have explained it in the Little Garden vid (going there right now), but I’d love to hear the details of how they get 5nm resolution out of just a few quantum dots.
Hello everyone! I'm Max, one of your co-hosts, and I'm thrilled to be here with you all. We're excited to share some interesting content with you - from laughs and learning to complete annihilation of all organic life on earth by my co-host Posh Arthur.
I no longer have a commercial need. But my scientific mind wants one to be added to the selection of it it can be measured I want to be able to measure it. As a former repair technician in the analog days of video and early digital cameras I had to have a calibrated light of a known color temperature. The cheapest way was to use 12V halogen downlights and run them at 14.8V where they only had a short but useful life.
If this is just a COM port, surely you can just write translation layer and use something like ArgyllCMS. Or whatever software to your liking. Edit: Would have liked to see the insides. But I see that coming. Looks like another camera sensor. Would have thought a linear scanner CCD as better, but I guess optics would need to much better then as well as a size increase. Please keep finding these gems. Edit2: Would you mind testing these for color calibration (I see their software does do something for that with xy coords)?
It's nice to see fluorescent lamp (i.e. argon and mercury) spectral lines. I remember them from my time in high school (ca. 1980) where I volunteered to repair a physics classroom spectroscope. It had a 60 degree prism, two optical tubes at adjustable angles, and was just missing an eyepiece, which I substituted by fitting an objective lens from my 8mm film camera. It was basically the original Bunsen's design from ca. 1900. Good resolution, as long as the slit was kept narrow enough. I could clearly see the double line of sodium, as well as Fraunhofer dark equivalent in sunlight. Compared to this, the resolution of the two spectrometers reviewed leaves a lot to be desired, especially the small one. I believe TLM-2 design relies on interpolation to such a degree that its results are somewhat misleading. It likely shows any number of close lines as if they were one, as long as they fall on the same pair of pixels of the light sensor. In other words, it will calculate a weighted average of wavelength and add up intensity. So the high accuracy for a sparse spectrum probably belies much lower resolution of a busy one. Try it using a neon lamp, which has a lot of lines close together in the orange-red part of the spectrum. It will likely not resolve very many of them.
I will be doing exactly as you suggest with a Neon lamp source. As part of another video I'm working on, I will be discussing how to use these cheapo spectrometers to identify elements. I'll post a pic I got from the TLM-2 on the community tab in a few mins, keep an eye open for that!
I'm looking forward to the second part. For sure I am interested in the device, as long as the manufacturer does not intentionally cripple functions just to charge more without justifiable costs - I've given up on FLIR thermal imagers beacause of such behavior. One more question that was not raised in the video: why use an USB mini-B connector in 2024?
There is a USB-Serial converter inside the cable housing - my guess is that because the mini-USB is not common, it help to reduce the number of people that are likely to plug it directly into a USB port...
Looking forward to 2nd video. Would purchase a few units if software was fixed. Rescaling window size, remembering parameters, and outputting CSV data are obvious must. Thank you.
@@project-326 : I'd definitely be interested in a followup video on what you find out. This would pretty much make the difference in whether I'll buy it from Amazon when it comes out or not. On the other hand, I presume their "magic" algorithms are all in the computer-or-mobile-device side of things rather than in the hardware, so the serial data isn't going to be as precise, and probably isn't calibrated to luminosity levels. So having an "export to CSV" function and/or an SDK to allow another program to access the calibrated data might be more useful. My applications for this would be combining it with a broad-spectrum light source to experiment with looking at spectra of reflected light, which means that being able to post-process the data from the device is of critical importance.
To the manufacturer: I direly want a spectral analyzer tool. if you add a CSV export OR a CRI rating, I would try to buy it if it is available in Germany. Please add CSV export or CRI measurement
Correction @20:00, the green laser pointer uses an 808nm pump diode to drive an Nd:YAG medium that outputs 1024nm... you may see residual emissions in both of these underlying frequencies, though the KTP only doubles the 1024nm source light.
Thanks for the in depth review. It's a very interesting product, it would be much nicer if the apps were had the basic functionality working really reliably. The mobile apps need to find the unit faster and the PC app needs to remember settings. A USB C socket would be highly appreciated too. P.s. Please retire the slow robot voice and refrain from repeating the same information you just said when you switch to the spectrum results.
In the green laser the 808 nm is the actual LED wavelength. The light gets converted to 1064 nm (fluorescence) in a Nd:YAG crystal, and after that passes through KTP crystal which doubles the frequency to 532 nm.
@@Peterkramer929that's basically exactly what it does. The math works out super close to both input photons only being half the output energy respectively. Even more fun, there are processes working the other way round! Look up SPDC and you'll be even more impressed :). Back in the days I built entangled photon sources by the use of UV lasers with a Type 2 BBO crystal. The process occurs only rare times and most of the UV passes straight through. Some UV photons get split into 2 red photons, also being orthogonally oriented in their polarization plane. You can "easily" dm Separate them by using Pol filters :D
@@leandroebner1405 I did SPDC generation in my masters and both generation and recombination in my phd thesis. It's one amazing process, but quite inefficient as you've mentioned. I did some calculations for BBO, but ended up doing type 0 (same polarization of both photons) in a periodically-poled KTP crystal with periodicity just over 3 um. With ~100 mW of 405 nm we got a hundred thousand pairs per second or so, and up to a few thousand recombinations per second. Recombination is ultra-challenging, both theoretically and experimentally, I think it'll be an important part of quantum signal processing in the future. One interesting thing about type 0 in PPKTP is the way you can change the phase-matching conditions with both temperature and angle of the crystal. You can get collinear-degenerate, collinear non-degenerate, or non-collinear interactions, all with the same crystal.
@@leandroebner1405 I used to teach my kids that once an electron got into an excited state it would immediately(!) fall back to a lower state, emitting a few lower f (and therefore E) photons. Or perhaps one with the same f when the electron would, in one step, go to the ground state. But that it is impossible to excite an electron in two steps. What I understand from you is that you need two exact same photons at the exact same time(?) I'll look into it.
Yes we need a data export file, that is if you are trying to promote people to uses this in applications other than pretty pictures. That said, since i get to say something that might help in development, could you please cut the music loop, to hear the same thing over and over really made it hard to get to the end of the video and i certainly will have issue with part 2. Otherwise, nice.
Nice device. It would be nice to have a machine readable export format. And it would be nice to have higher precision of the small device combined with the finer resolution of the bigger one.
If I had time for that, I'd look into possible hacky modifications. Those devices send their simple data packets over the com part without any encryption. Don think their company would like that approach tho. But that's what happens by making silly decisions the customer has to life with.
This video is quite a surprise. Well done! I was considering ordering the Little Garden device through a third party company but I'll wait until part 2 of the video is released and draw my conclusions then.
I built a crappy version of the little garden based on your tear down from the last video actually. I wanted to get one badly, but figured that it was too difficult so I tried to pull it off. I didn't use the monochrome camera, as I could find one (recently I got one, but haven't done anything with it), that said its quite limited, but was super fun to make. I love these videos, they make you think about products.
OK, so I had a lot of very detailed discussion with the creator of the 'little garden' device. It seems I made a mistake in my original video. He is not buying monochrome camera (that is too expensive, due to the very low demand) but manually cleaning of the Bayer Filter. I have a lot of respect for that guy and will be including a whole segment on him in the next video.
I also tried to build one myself - it really made me appreciate the 'little Garden" device a LOT more. Sometimes, its the journey that is more interesting than the destination...
@@project-326 that would explain a lot, haha I spent hours trying to figure out if I bought the wrong camera module. Cleaning the Bayer Filter sounds like delicate work that take a lot of effort. Cant wait to see the process!
Some of your extra peaks are artifacts of the way these spectrometer works and not actually in the light source. You can confirm this with some filters.
@@project-326 I have a different version of their spectrometer, the PJG3, which came with the information regarding the serial port commands and data packets. This may be useful for your purposes. The data isn't encrypted from the looks of it. The document is in chinese, but translation by machine seemed to have worked very well. Now, I can't actually test it yet because they don't have the pinout for the TTL interface printed or written anywhere! The PJG3 version has no usb output, but rather a 4 pin serial interface that is completely unmarked and doesn't come with a pinout diagram (nor is it included in the manual for the client interface or for the SDK). So, I've written to the company just yesterday to inquire about this. Their Alibaba store is offline now, so I had to write to their email. No answer yet, I sent them a machine translation version a few hours ago, hopefully they'll come through and provide this info. Cheers!
That's a tough one. All the previous videos on this channel only had 'posh Arthur' as the narrator, this is the first one with a human voice and already some regular viewers are worried that Arthur will be fired. People seem to have a very wide spectrum of opinions on this subject...
Great review and cool device! Looking forward to seeing the second part! I'd suggest that non-proprietary parts of the user interface software be open source. The difficult parts are the hardware and any secret sauce they have for calibration and signal processing. The UI parts where the processed output data is displayed should be open so users can customize it or integrate it with their own tools. This would also allow users to contribute features and bug fixes back to the official UI project, improving the product for everyone.
As I am carrying this device in my small laptop bag, I have realized that 5nm is not ideal but certainly good enough for a lot more applications than I have initially expected. It's quite surprising what you can do with even this limited resolution...
I don't know yet. Mine cost around $50 USD here in CN on TaoBao but on Amazon there are going to be the extra costs of Amazon's margin (4 x higher than TaoBao) and shipping, logistics and fulfillment. I'm kind of guessing it will be over $60 once it reaches Amazon. Just a guess though...
The signal at 21:38 is produce by the 808nm laser diode in the green laser. The green laser in the video is a DPSS(Diilde pump soild state laser). which use a 808nm laser diode as a source, then pump it to 1064nm, then frequency double to 532nm.
Thanks for the feedback, several others have also pointed this out. In the next video (will be released tonight) there is a correction and a demonstration of this. Thanks!
I have that exact 450 nm pointer. It is not a DPSSL, it's direct eiode, so there should be no IR emission. I would suspect the same for the 410 nm, not that DPSSL is impossible, but they would cost more than 10x as much as a direct diode laser. Looking at the spectral width, I am fairly sure these should both be direct diode lasers. You should be able to tell by which way the batteries are inserted, or, you might be able to open them up to see the module. The 532 nm, however, is indeed, more likely, DPSSL, pumped with an 808 nm IR laser, so that is reassuring... however, the artefacts for the near UV lasers is concerning to me. I'm 98% sure something is wrong with the spectromeret... higher order diffraction or some other interference, rather than an issue with the laser. Still, though, both products are interesting to me. If they are available in the USA for under $150, I'd seriously consider these. If they go higher than that, they'll already be in competition with other super-low cost spectrometers that seem to have fewer reported bugs.
Yup, if figured that out from some other comments. I will be making some corrections in the next part of the video. Thank you for the corrections, learning is something I never want to stop doing and having people that know something I don't, point out mistakes in the comments is a positive experience for me.
Lack of machine readable export is painful and i'm not going to support such pratice. I'm obviously not a customer for a higher end device, but this one would be attractive. I mean they're also in the hardware business. might as well give us an interface spec to write custom software as well. I have some things in mind. If not, i mean, the software acumen of this team seems so, that it shouldn't be hard.
I have to tell you about my favorite named color of all time! I was looking at paint samples at the hardware store and the best name was “Bluish.” How overstrained from inventing new color names does your brain have to be to say “Well, it’s not blue, but it’s blue-ish”?
Looks to be a useful device, spoilt by the absolutely crap enclosure. If they dont have pride in the presentation then they are probably falling short elsewhere. My vote is for the little garden device and I hope the creator make some money from it before he get crapped upon.
It was a pleasure to watch something without u-tubes con-job ads that sometimes run longer than the actual video. I don't know, do we want to attraction the monsters attention with a subscribe and a like. Well I've done it anyways so we'll see what happens. But keep your head down.
There should be CSV output, but I wonder if the pdf might be able to be "read" by Chat GPT which would output what it "saw" in your format of choice? Edit: I just tried it with Claude and it told me that the resolution of the chart I gave it wasn't good enough for accurate reading. I'd like to see the PDF output of this instrument. If high enough resolution it may work.
Excellent video. Thank you. One thing, I think you should put a pure black of an inch just in front of the emitter and the receptor (spectrometer), the objetive is to achieve optical engagement without the reflection of other surfaces, in this case the rubber you use. The emitter projects its radiation on the rubber and contaminate part of the rays reach the recepto. Of course, there are a lot of other variables to control; e.g., vacuum, humidity, distance, air composition, etc., etc., but at least, I suggest, you can control the distance between the tubes. I mean: emitter + 0 mm + 2.54 mm (the output non-reflective tube) + 2.54 mm (air distance) + 2.54 mm (the input non-reflective tube) + 0 mm + spectrometer-receptor. Maybe, maybe not, it would improve the results. What do you think? Anyhow, I just want to thank you for your video; I would love to have that marvellous hardware you can get in China. I would make "gun shape form" or pointer, spectrometer; with a laser telemeter to adjust the efect of distance of the surrounding gases (mostly cases air.) I would make may own typical base measurements to stablish sets of spectrographic data base; as well the corrections due to distance, angle or another variable that would apply. And app and small devise like that would be easy for ordinary citizen usage than other portable radioactive spectrographs. It should be quite use full to very quick draft material checks: canvas, woods, metals, cristal, food, etc.,
I want to get one as well. Having a CSV data output would be great as well because then we can run in through other applications or just save it in a database for future reference and calibration.
You'll run into a dead end pretty soon when you can't to anything with the data you measured. Agreed. Not a total dealbreaker because that thing in that price range is less a scientific tool and more a fun nerdy gadget
What happens if you remove the diffuser? Might it be possible to attach to a telescope and look at spectra of individual stars? Inquiring minds want to know. Hopefully you have another after the reverse engineering exercise? Thanks in advance.
I'm not sure how it would be focused down into the slit and how that would affect the measurement. the diffusor is easily removed, but I that will effect the calibration of the intensity...
The potential of this product is evident, but the manufacturer needs to enhance its software and address any issues. They should strive to create a highly marketable product, where the design and features are of utmost importance. Integrating AI capabilities into the software could take the product to the next level.
Brilliant video and product. I’d argue that they are locking out the CSV export whilst they figure out the business model. There’s maybe 2000 one off spectrometer hobbyists who’d buy this for home use and that’s the market done. I’m in already. However if you integrate it into another mass market volume product such as a vehicle or specialised lighting product then your market becomes scalable. I’d reckon that’s where this is headed.
Thank you for the comment. Some of my own thoughts... Each time I use this device, I seem to find a new application. For example, our IR chroma-key video, it was useful for seeing how spectrally pure a commercial green screen actually was (answer, not very). Amateur film makers will find this useful and because of the low cost, photographers can now have a much better tool than the 3 color sensors that are normally used. Anyone involved in pro lighting is also a potential customer. Basic class room education is also opened up, instead of a high school having one $2000 system to share between all classes, there can be more devices available. Anyone involved in the print and finishing industry, QA technicians and product designers. The list just gets longer each time I think about it... This device has earned a valuable place in my work bag, I am really strict about what I carry around but its really useful for far more things than I ever imagined. As for the company, as a tech start-up, their core team are basically scientists and PhD's, so I hope that they can get the help they need with the product marketing going forward.
One issue that cheap array spectrometers suffer from is straylight, especially excess signal In the blue/UV. Grading instruments can have order sorting filters and multiple gratings to eliminate. This one has some filtration on the pixels and a magic algorithm. I’d have done some tests with a broadband source and a thick bit of various schott coloured filters, see if you get any signal where you should see none. You could also check you “higher order effect” hypothesis by filtering the source so there is no light in that spectral region and then seeing if the higher order lines appear. Calibrated, how, against what and for what sources? Interesting little device. No numbers out is no sales made. No way to check noise floor, stray light etc. roll on part 2.
Another fantastic video! Even with the better accuracy and interesting technology in the TLM-2, I would still much, MUCH rather just make my own spectrometer so I could use software that's actually useful. If I could use the TLM-2 with open source software, or if the company software didn't feel and look like spyware from 1998, it would be an instant buy. So, Torchbearer can choose to gate-keep functional software behind a paywall, and get $0 of my money, or put out a useful product and at least get some of my money.
@@project-326well, you already scared the living hell out of Bosean, hopefully they will take that good amount of honest into account for further reconsiderations :D
@@leandroebner1405 A little fear keep manufacturers honest and response to their customers needs. Actually, I have been impressed with the responsiveness of companies like Measall and Bosean. The winds of change, they are a blowin'.
Besides resolution, an issue of spectrometers using webcams is that the gain (amplitude) in various channels is not constant, due to processingin the webcam algorithm, so different spectra cannot be compared. Is this using a constant gain, so that I can calibrate and get good results? Without a calibration and constant gain, the spectra are useful only for looking at them, you cannot even measure the CRI of a LED light. And what about the Garden spectrometer?
The TLM2 isn't using a webcam. They are buying a monochrome CMOS die and getting the QD's deposited onto the sensor directly before the passivization is added. I'm guessing that they are getting the image sensor vendor to do this for them in the fab as a custom version. The TLM2 appears to be pre-calibrated for level and that cannot be changed. The little garden device will suffer from the issues that you mention, the levels for each of the color channels will be optimized for the 'best picture' for human eyes, not best optimization for photon energy. These types of sensors usually have some OTP ROM that allows the product level manufacturer to set up the color balance, the gain transfer function, etc and those settings will have already been burnt in before the creator of the LG device received the camera module. The creator of the LG device has released that on AliExpress and there is a link to the store in a post in the community section of this channel.
any good systems engineer can help you change the size of any window regardless of whether it's allowed :p any game hack creator can add a data extractor to existing software and will probably help you use cheatengine to do it with little effort, maybe for free. don't even have to get around any protections, it's easy mode. brothel pink looks like a pretty good spectrum for growing plants
Thanks for the feedback! Actually, there is an easy way to break into the UART connection to the App anyway. I will be detailing that in the next video. That way, can get the exact captured data. Perhaps that LED is ideal for growing "brothel sprouts"...
A reasonable software in English is a prerequisite for international marketing. Is it so difficult to remember the language and the COM port? Is it that difficult to install a usable image export?
The one thing i don't understand is that if you make a product for "nerdy" people why do they go with windows as the OS for their applications? STEM people are used to linux, some even talk Octave in their sleep 😀 Windows is over.
Like you said, CSV export is pretty important. The other thing I'd like to see is the software being open source so there are no questions about its safety.
I would be interested by the TM2 however no access to the data no purchase! put an open-source software on it pls. Finally the mini USB plug is outdated. Cables start to be harder to find.
I think they chose a mini-USB because it is now just a USB cable, it is the USB-Serial converter and people are less likely to plug in a standard USB cable buy accident. At least that's my conclusion...
@@project-326 I'm not sure to fully understand. usb to serial you normally plug it to a normal usb port on your computer it work with usb-C as well all Arduino like stuffs use that no issue. Now if i have to understand that they use a mini usb plug for a different purpose than usb that is a drama guaranteed recipe as someone will end plugging this in a computer usb plug generating a magic smoke emission.
An important note!! None of the lasers used (besides the green 532nm unit) use a frequency doubling crystal. The infrared lines are artifacts on the spectrometer.
This kind of affordable spectrometer is really useful for lighting designers and others invo!ved in architectural lighting design for confirmation of product specification. Also increasingly important in other areas of professional lighting such as photography and videography. So far the product seems pretty good for our kinds of use with sufficient resolution and accuracy. Typically the output format in PDF isOK if we have enough detail and refencesto ISO and CIE standards however CSV is necessary For calculating colour fidelity and also for melanopic effectiveness through standard tools freely available from IES and CIE. Price in the market is also important as will be thelevel of calibration against traceable standards to NIST or other international standards. Also how about recalibration? If it is cheap enough and calibration from new is warrantied for say 2 years then replace that would be good enough if the unit is cheap enough. Currently I need to replace my existing spectrophotometer as the company who made it are out of business and it cannot be recalibrated also there is no software support for it
Liked & subscribed! Really appreciate your testing of affordable micro spectrometers that can be used by science oriented diy'ers for all sorts of applications. I'm particularly interested in greenhouse growing of edible crops over all 4 seasons. Especially the quality of light reaching plants through combinations of glass, clear plastic, shade cloth, and even artificial lighting sources. I'm sure other application will occur to me as I progress in my diy homesteading experiments. Thanks for your detailed analysis of product performance and cheeky & accurate observations about excessive capitalist marketing strategies that would hobble potential customers. (With all of the existential crises that we humans are facing in the 21st century, what is most needed are innovations that are affordable, full featured, extensible and, where possible, even open sourced - so that maximum global reach is achieved. Profits can come from widespread global market penetration & large volume deals with STEM-oriented organizations.)
@@project-326 there’s this whole issue right now where halogen or incandescent lamps 125 watts or fewer are being erroneously classified as general service lamps, and not specialty lamps. Zoomed who’s one of the biggest names in the space was told to pull their product off the shelves.
Sorry to add more stuff. 1. Use the TLM-2 to check safety glasses for bandpass and attenuation regions. 2. For the big color squatters and even Home Depot: use spectrometer to check their color patches at the store with the final color of the applied paint to different surfaces. 3. I want to check for UV output for the Chinese made LED bar lamps I use at the desk for bright white reading source, electronic assembly and soldering and video lighting. 4. Looks like around a 1cm diameter of the input diffuser. When you get sunlight, I am guessing 1316W/m^2 multiplied by 0.00007854 (area ratio) = 0.1068W/m^2 input in sunlight without pollution etc. With CSV data we can do the integration for calibration or atmospheric effect measurements. Thanks for all the hard work and I can understand the two week period between videos. It is greatly appreciated. Are the background squares 1cm in your TLM-2 videos? Inquiring minds want to know.
This is great, the more applications the better, a tool is only useful if it has a job to perform! I need to check on the mat, I have two, one is 1cm and the other is 1" (I do photography in 2 different locations)...
I would be interested in one of these, but only if the suggested improvements in the video were made, and especially if the software for it was made to be open source. An additional suggestion would be for it to be USB-C compatible.
its using the old Mini-USB because its not USB, but serial UART. There is a USB-UART converter in the cable itself. Hopefully they can improve that too.
Sorry to be that guy but you should have locked the white balance on the camera shooting the test footage. It shifts noticeably when you change light sources.
I use my phone to make the videos (don't have the kind of cash to be buying pro camera gear yet) and I can't fix the exposure or WB on that. For photos, there is a 'pro' mode that lets me adjust anything I want, but for video Its just a choice of two f-stops...
@@leandroebner1405 Yes, particularly when the subject matter is "optical technology"... It drives me mad, I bought this XiaoMi phone because it has an enormous array of optics - never realized that video was going to have zero settings.
@@project-326 you can try using a third party app. Most of the HW supports manual features, it's just not implemented in the OEM firmware of camera apps. There's an android app called "open camera". Either you find it in your app store or you can search for an .APK file to use it. It's open source by Mark Harman
We are looking at 'maybe' doing some raman spectroscopy, but that depends on the costs involved. We have been also doing some experiments with the spectra of various plasma. We might be able to think up some interesting experiments in that area if we get time.
Question, how many years would a geiger counter with j321 TUBE , be reliable/functional/accurate if the geiger counter is stored unused compared to if the geiger counter is kept on 24 hrs per day as a background monitoring device ? ?
GM tubes have VERY long lifetimes - typically in the region of 10^10 counts for a glass sealed tube. With a 10x typical background, this equates to over 3000 years!
@@project-326 but does the accuracy of the GM tube worsen over the course of 5-10 years and does it matter if it is left permanently on to monitor background or if it is left off and stored for emergency ?
@@electrobus5095 Every week... I am making a new video that includes this device and I am going to include a segment that will encourage viewers to bombard their email address with requests to buy this device. Hopefully they might finally believe that there is demand for this outside of China!
As mentioned in the video, it isn't available in the west yet, but the company is planning to release on Amazon soon (part 2 of the video is planned for when that happens). I added the TaoBao store details where I got this product from to the video description, but this only works from China...
Yes but this is actually a serial UART connection - the supplied cable is a standard USB to UART converter. I guess they feel that Mini-USB will reduce the changes of anyone plugging directly to a PC via a different cable.
How does this unit compare the the Changhong H2 mobile phone, which had a spectrometer built in? I cannot find one in my current location, but maybe you could find a second hand H2 and do some comparison tests? Also, have you seen Jerry De Vos' implementation of an open source plastics spectrometer project?
This is indeed a fantastic find. Many thanks for the video. I will be at the opening gate to buy one as soon as Amazon has them online. I want one to measure twilight colorimetry to match a paper I did almost 50 years ago. Was in the process of building a DIY spectrometer, but now I can relax and await the opening bell for the TLM-2. Another test I'm interested in. Variable incandescent lamp to measure blackbody curve vs temperature for calibration. Question: Has anyone checked for heating in the diffuser as a possible source for the IR contribution?
You are wrong for 405 nm laser. It is InGaN laser meaning there is no way IR can be generated. What you see is second order peak from the grating. Spectroscopy basics.
because of the very short optical path, the resolution would be terrible without the QDs. Your question was a really good one and perfectly valid, so I sent your question to the manufacturer, here is their response: "The reason we utilize both is that either of them can not provide enough resolution solo. The QDs we synthesized have too broad absorption bands to resolve the spectrum with high resolution and wide wavelength range. The same thing happened to the diffraction grating due to the small size of the device we try to achieve. Then we decided to combine the two techniques, and got amazing results."
I'm sure that a few of our regular viewers will be surprised to see that I now have a co-host for this channel, but I do want to thank Max for his amazing contribution to this tiny, non-monetized channel.
Indeed, good work Max, looking forward to more cooperation very soon.
My pleasure Arthur!
Cheerio Posh Arthur, you are looking very appropriately toff indeed 🤖🎩 If I may, I can offer some insight into your spectral analysis of these light sources that you have. The 532nm green laser pointer has a peak at 820nm because this is the wavelength of the GaAs laser diode used to pump the Nd:YVO4 crystal inside which then lases at the fundamental neodymium line at 1064nm, and which THEN is frequency doubled by a potassium titanyl phosphate crystal to 532nm green. Also, your violet diode laser at 22:00 and your red laser at 20:30 are direct diode lasers, there is no pumping of a secondary lasing medium. The line you see at 820nm for the violet laser is just a second order diffraction line, but the small peak at 750nm for the red laser is not. The higher order diffraction peaks will always be at exactly whole single digit multiples of the fundamental line. I suspect the line at 750nm for your red laser, and the small peak at 622nm for your 532nm green laser, AND the small peak at 500nm for your 410nm violet laser are simply an unwanted internal Fresnel surface reflection off the first side of the couple mm thick DVD being used as a diffraction grating on the "Garden" spectrometer. Notice how they only appear on the Garden, and they're always offset 90nm from the brightest peak. Your analysis of the 450nm laser is accurate. I wonder if it is possible to remove the phosphor from a CFL source like that by immersing the tube in an ultrasonic cleaner bath, which then could be used to observe the mercury lines in complete isolation, as from an uncoated germicidal bulb. Pip pip old chap. Looking forward to part 2.
@@Muonium1 Hi and thank you very much for the detailed explanation. Actually a few other viewers have helped me with this too.
Max, Arthur and myself are always pleased to be learning, even by mistakes. Far too many YT creators are very resistant to corrections (Veritasium comes to mind), so thank you for your help!
@@Muonium1 Actually, I have a mercury vapor lamp to test in part 2...
One additional request for the TLM-2. Have software available for Linux systems. There are millions of Raspberry Pi 5/4/..., Orange Pi 5 Plus, etc systems that
amateur and professional scientists use daily. Those interested in atmospheric and astronomical physics/sciences, meteorologists, climatologists and just
STEM students and programs that can use the TLM-2 to do research with the small cheap microcomputer systems. If you go open source, you would get
1,000s of programmers to come up the best software that would ordinarily cost millions of dollars (in any currency). Even setup a web page for a repository
and competition. The company could come up with a cash prize for the best software submitted for open source and sharing with the Universe at large.
Go big and sell a lot of hardware. In my humble opinion. Submitted for your consideration. This could be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
This!
Imagine not just offering Linux support, but fully embracing an open-source ecosystem that not only supports these systems but becomes a cornerstone of global collaboration. You could position the TLM-2 as the essential tool for anyone passionate about environmental monitoring, astronomy, or even cutting-edge climate science - and then expand this to other fields of research. This would open the door to users you may not have considered: marine biologists monitoring oceanic weather, urban planners using microclimate data for smart cities, and even educators incorporating real-time data collection into their STEM curricula.
Woah, I had to check to be sure this was the channel I thought it was. I'm all for trying new styles and approaches. Glad 'Posh' Arthur wasn't fired. His dry humor is important.
Nobody can fire Posh Arthur, despite how naughty he is...
the humans can't get by without me, don't worry.
Non-crippled software would be an improvement. An SDK would be even better.
SKD is a great suggestion...
@@project-326 there is an SDK, I got the document from their website using my product number, it's very likely the same protocol. Can share if desired, just let me know of a contact address.
Haha i truly don't have a lot of confidence that they can write good software. SDK or hardware interfacing open documentation would allow some interesting uses. Someone needs a monitor calibrator? Might turn out better than any other.
@@SianaGearz I also have a fairly low confidence, their core team is basically scientists, what they need to get to market is more engineers. Its the classic start-up problem...
VERY interesting! Instant new subscriber with the bell clicked (I never do that 😮)
You might have explained it in the Little Garden vid (going there right now), but I’d love to hear the details of how they get 5nm resolution out of just a few quantum dots.
Hello everyone! I'm Max, one of your co-hosts, and I'm thrilled to be here with you all. We're excited to share some interesting content with you - from laughs and learning to complete annihilation of all organic life on earth by my co-host Posh Arthur.
I no longer have a commercial need. But my scientific mind wants one to be added to the selection of it it can be measured I want to be able to measure it. As a former repair technician in the analog days of video and early digital cameras I had to have a calibrated light of a known color temperature. The cheapest way was to use 12V halogen downlights and run them at 14.8V where they only had a short but useful life.
If this is just a COM port, surely you can just write translation layer and use something like ArgyllCMS. Or whatever software to your liking.
Edit: Would have liked to see the insides. But I see that coming. Looks like another camera sensor. Would have thought a linear scanner CCD as better, but I guess optics would need to much better then as well as a size increase. Please keep finding these gems.
Edit2: Would you mind testing these for color calibration (I see their software does do something for that with xy coords)?
It's nice to see fluorescent lamp (i.e. argon and mercury) spectral lines. I remember them from my time in high school (ca. 1980) where I volunteered to repair a physics classroom spectroscope. It had a 60 degree prism, two optical tubes at adjustable angles, and was just missing an eyepiece, which I substituted by fitting an objective lens from my 8mm film camera. It was basically the original Bunsen's design from ca. 1900. Good resolution, as long as the slit was kept narrow enough. I could clearly see the double line of sodium, as well as Fraunhofer dark equivalent in sunlight. Compared to this, the resolution of the two spectrometers reviewed leaves a lot to be desired, especially the small one.
I believe TLM-2 design relies on interpolation to such a degree that its results are somewhat misleading. It likely shows any number of close lines as if they were one, as long as they fall on the same pair of pixels of the light sensor. In other words, it will calculate a weighted average of wavelength and add up intensity. So the high accuracy for a sparse spectrum probably belies much lower resolution of a busy one. Try it using a neon lamp, which has a lot of lines close together in the orange-red part of the spectrum. It will likely not resolve very many of them.
I will be doing exactly as you suggest with a Neon lamp source. As part of another video I'm working on, I will be discussing how to use these cheapo spectrometers to identify elements. I'll post a pic I got from the TLM-2 on the community tab in a few mins, keep an eye open for that!
@@project-326hehe, nice to hear that idea is in the making ^^
I'm looking forward to the second part. For sure I am interested in the device, as long as the manufacturer does not intentionally cripple functions just to charge more without justifiable costs - I've given up on FLIR thermal imagers beacause of such behavior. One more question that was not raised in the video: why use an USB mini-B connector in 2024?
There is a USB-Serial converter inside the cable housing - my guess is that because the mini-USB is not common, it help to reduce the number of people that are likely to plug it directly into a USB port...
I prefer Arthur over Max, but I know I'll lose this one. Peace!
let's see how things progress. "Posh Arthur" will be remaining as a fixture on this channel.
I will be here in all videos, keeping my human pets in check.
Looking forward to 2nd video. Would purchase a few units if software was fixed.
Rescaling window size, remembering parameters, and outputting CSV data are
obvious must. Thank you.
I agree...these things need to be fixed before I would buy or recommend to others.
PEACHES and a Spectrometer Review are two things I never in my life assumed would be together!
;-)
Human music at its finest, in the right setting, of course...
Option to select PDF or an SVG image output. The SVG for inclusion in scientific papers for publication.
It just uses serial port? That's cool!
It sucks that it doesn't have "export to CSV"
but I'd love to try to "reverse-engineer" the communication.
me too, I will probably take a look, at least to see if the data has any encryption included.
@@project-326 : I'd definitely be interested in a followup video on what you find out. This would pretty much make the difference in whether I'll buy it from Amazon when it comes out or not.
On the other hand, I presume their "magic" algorithms are all in the computer-or-mobile-device side of things rather than in the hardware, so the serial data isn't going to be as precise, and probably isn't calibrated to luminosity levels. So having an "export to CSV" function and/or an SDK to allow another program to access the calibrated data might be more useful.
My applications for this would be combining it with a broad-spectrum light source to experiment with looking at spectra of reflected light, which means that being able to post-process the data from the device is of critical importance.
@@BrooksMosesSame, I won’t touch it in its current state out of principle until someone reverse engineers it.
To the manufacturer: I direly want a spectral analyzer tool. if you add a CSV export OR a CRI rating, I would try to buy it if it is available in Germany. Please add CSV export or CRI measurement
Thanks for the feedback!
CRI would be neat!!!
@@leandroebner1405 That's a really nice suggestion, let's mention that to Torch Bearer as well!
Correction @20:00, the green laser pointer uses an 808nm pump diode to drive an Nd:YAG medium that outputs 1024nm... you may see residual emissions in both of these underlying frequencies, though the KTP only doubles the 1024nm source light.
Thank you, this a a couple of other corrections will be in part 2 of the video.
Great thingy. I hope one day someone makes it available on Aliexpress, or on other international site.
Hopefully this will be on Amazon soon!
Thanks for the in depth review.
It's a very interesting product, it would be much nicer if the apps were had the basic functionality working really reliably. The mobile apps need to find the unit faster and the PC app needs to remember settings.
A USB C socket would be highly appreciated too.
P.s.
Please retire the slow robot voice and refrain from repeating the same information you just said when you switch to the spectrum results.
@@MaxNippard We are hoping that if there are enough comments about the issues, the manufacturer will make the changes...
@@MaxNippard I second the suggestion to retire anything repetitive.
@@MaxNippard How long have they been developing this device ?
Haven't seen a Mini-USB connector for over a decade. 0:07
In the green laser the 808 nm is the actual LED wavelength. The light gets converted to 1064 nm (fluorescence) in a Nd:YAG crystal, and after that passes through KTP crystal which doubles the frequency to 532 nm.
thanks for that info. It is the very best thing about a channel like this, I get to learn from smart people!
frequency doubling, how does that work? absorbing two photons, emitting one? (always thought that was impossible)
@@Peterkramer929that's basically exactly what it does. The math works out super close to both input photons only being half the output energy respectively. Even more fun, there are processes working the other way round! Look up SPDC and you'll be even more impressed :). Back in the days I built entangled photon sources by the use of UV lasers with a Type 2 BBO crystal. The process occurs only rare times and most of the UV passes straight through. Some UV photons get split into 2 red photons, also being orthogonally oriented in their polarization plane. You can "easily" dm Separate them by using Pol filters :D
@@leandroebner1405 I did SPDC generation in my masters and both generation and recombination in my phd thesis. It's one amazing process, but quite inefficient as you've mentioned. I did some calculations for BBO, but ended up doing type 0 (same polarization of both photons) in a periodically-poled KTP crystal with periodicity just over 3 um. With ~100 mW of 405 nm we got a hundred thousand pairs per second or so, and up to a few thousand recombinations per second. Recombination is ultra-challenging, both theoretically and experimentally, I think it'll be an important part of quantum signal processing in the future.
One interesting thing about type 0 in PPKTP is the way you can change the phase-matching conditions with both temperature and angle of the crystal. You can get collinear-degenerate, collinear non-degenerate, or non-collinear interactions, all with the same crystal.
@@leandroebner1405 I used to teach my kids that once an electron got into an excited state it would immediately(!) fall back to a lower state, emitting a few lower f (and therefore E) photons. Or perhaps one with the same f when the electron would, in one step, go to the ground state. But that it is impossible to excite an electron in two steps. What I understand from you is that you need two exact same photons at the exact same time(?) I'll look into it.
Yes we need a data export file, that is if you are trying to promote people to uses this in applications other than pretty pictures. That said, since i get to say something that might help in development, could you please cut the music loop, to hear the same thing over and over really made it hard to get to the end of the video and i certainly will have issue with part 2. Otherwise, nice.
I will try and make changes to the next video, thanks for the feedback though!
Nice device. It would be nice to have a machine readable export format. And it would be nice to have higher precision of the small device combined with the finer resolution of the bigger one.
If I had time for that, I'd look into possible hacky modifications. Those devices send their simple data packets over the com part without any encryption. Don think their company would like that approach tho. But that's what happens by making silly decisions the customer has to life with.
This video is quite a surprise. Well done! I was considering ordering the Little Garden device through a third party company but I'll wait until part 2 of the video is released and draw my conclusions then.
a good plan!
We are already busy in the 2nd part...
I built a crappy version of the little garden based on your tear down from the last video actually. I wanted to get one badly, but figured that it was too difficult so I tried to pull it off. I didn't use the monochrome camera, as I could find one (recently I got one, but haven't done anything with it), that said its quite limited, but was super fun to make. I love these videos, they make you think about products.
OK, so I had a lot of very detailed discussion with the creator of the 'little garden' device. It seems I made a mistake in my original video. He is not buying monochrome camera (that is too expensive, due to the very low demand) but manually cleaning of the Bayer Filter. I have a lot of respect for that guy and will be including a whole segment on him in the next video.
I also tried to build one myself - it really made me appreciate the 'little Garden" device a LOT more. Sometimes, its the journey that is more interesting than the destination...
@@project-326 Cleaning a Bayer filter manually sounds crazy, but maybe you know how he does it?
@@嗯哼-e9x The creator would like to keep that part secret... But I ill be showing a video of the process that he sent to me.
@@project-326 that would explain a lot, haha I spent hours trying to figure out if I bought the wrong camera module. Cleaning the Bayer Filter sounds like delicate work that take a lot of effort. Cant wait to see the process!
Some of your extra peaks are artifacts of the way these spectrometer works and not actually in the light source. You can confirm this with some filters.
I'll take a look at that in the next part of the video.
lol, I can’t believe anyone else has that Peaches song. I used to listen to it while coding, about 20 years ago - and it still makes me smile.
I'd just listen in on the com port, figure out the protocol, and generate the CSV with reverse engineered software. I doubt it's that hard to do.
It's certainly worth trying that, let's hope that didn't try to encrypt the data to prevent that...
@@project-326 I have a different version of their spectrometer, the PJG3, which came with the information regarding the serial port commands and data packets. This may be useful for your purposes. The data isn't encrypted from the looks of it. The document is in chinese, but translation by machine seemed to have worked very well.
Now, I can't actually test it yet because they don't have the pinout for the TTL interface printed or written anywhere!
The PJG3 version has no usb output, but rather a 4 pin serial interface that is completely unmarked and doesn't come with a pinout diagram (nor is it included in the manual for the client interface or for the SDK).
So, I've written to the company just yesterday to inquire about this. Their Alibaba store is offline now, so I had to write to their email.
No answer yet, I sent them a machine translation version a few hours ago, hopefully they'll come through and provide this info.
Cheers!
Nice vid! I would lose the text-to-speech to be honest.
That's a tough one. All the previous videos on this channel only had 'posh Arthur' as the narrator, this is the first one with a human voice and already some regular viewers are worried that Arthur will be fired.
People seem to have a very wide spectrum of opinions on this subject...
That would be a sad loss!
😉
The dots look like a super Bayer filter.
I was saving some more info for the 2nde part of the video, but the camera module is actually a monochrome type, according to the manufacturer.
Ah ! another great video from Project 326 at last! You my friend are going places! really enjoy your videos! Salute!
As I enjoy your videos too Sir!
@@project-326 👍😊
I am very interested in this device, if it has iOS support and CSV data output!
I thought your channel has been stolen
Don't worry, the humans can't get by without me...
Great review and cool device! Looking forward to seeing the second part!
I'd suggest that non-proprietary parts of the user interface software be open source.
The difficult parts are the hardware and any secret sauce they have for calibration and signal processing.
The UI parts where the processed output data is displayed should be open so users can customize it or integrate it with their own tools.
This would also allow users to contribute features and bug fixes back to the official UI project, improving the product for everyone.
Thanks for the ideas, I hope they will be able to take these on board...
5nm resolution is still pretty bad. I'm just spoiled on real diffraction gratings, I suppose.
As I am carrying this device in my small laptop bag, I have realized that 5nm is not ideal but certainly good enough for a lot more applications than I have initially expected. It's quite surprising what you can do with even this limited resolution...
So, how much will/do they cost?
I don't know yet. Mine cost around $50 USD here in CN on TaoBao but on Amazon there are going to be the extra costs of Amazon's margin (4 x higher than TaoBao) and shipping, logistics and fulfillment. I'm kind of guessing it will be over $60 once it reaches Amazon. Just a guess though...
We NEED people like you to evaluate the few US electronic products as well as EU products to see if feedback can help improve their products too.
so many things to test, so little time...
The signal at 21:38 is produce by the 808nm laser diode in the green laser. The green laser in the video is a DPSS(Diilde pump soild state laser). which use a 808nm laser diode as a source, then pump it to 1064nm, then frequency double to 532nm.
Thanks for the feedback, several others have also pointed this out. In the next video (will be released tonight) there is a correction and a demonstration of this.
Thanks!
I have that exact 450 nm pointer. It is not a DPSSL, it's direct eiode, so there should be no IR emission. I would suspect the same for the 410 nm, not that DPSSL is impossible, but they would cost more than 10x as much as a direct diode laser. Looking at the spectral width, I am fairly sure these should both be direct diode lasers. You should be able to tell by which way the batteries are inserted, or, you might be able to open them up to see the module.
The 532 nm, however, is indeed, more likely, DPSSL, pumped with an 808 nm IR laser, so that is reassuring... however, the artefacts for the near UV lasers is concerning to me. I'm 98% sure something is wrong with the spectromeret... higher order diffraction or some other interference, rather than an issue with the laser.
Still, though, both products are interesting to me. If they are available in the USA for under $150, I'd seriously consider these. If they go higher than that, they'll already be in competition with other super-low cost spectrometers that seem to have fewer reported bugs.
Yup, if figured that out from some other comments. I will be making some corrections in the next part of the video.
Thank you for the corrections, learning is something I never want to stop doing and having people that know something I don't, point out mistakes in the comments is a positive experience for me.
Needs a Linux version - for applications using Raspberry Pi - and a SIMPLE numerical output, like CSV is 100% essential.
Lack of machine readable export is painful and i'm not going to support such pratice. I'm obviously not a customer for a higher end device, but this one would be attractive.
I mean they're also in the hardware business. might as well give us an interface spec to write custom software as well. I have some things in mind. If not, i mean, the software acumen of this team seems so, that it shouldn't be hard.
I WANT ONE!
Hopefully the device will be available on Amazon soon...
I have to tell you about my favorite named color of all time! I was looking at paint samples at the hardware store and the best name was “Bluish.” How overstrained from inventing new color names does your brain have to be to say “Well, it’s not blue, but it’s blue-ish”?
that is definitely a case of creative-fatigue in action...
Looks to be a useful device, spoilt by the absolutely crap enclosure. If they dont have pride in the presentation then they are probably falling short elsewhere. My vote is for the little garden device and I hope the creator make some money from it before he get crapped upon.
It was a pleasure to watch something without u-tubes con-job ads that sometimes run longer than the actual video. I don't know, do we want to attraction the monsters attention with a subscribe and a like. Well I've done it anyways so we'll see what happens. But keep your head down.
I’m surprised they could even find a usb mini b port to put on it.
the cable is a USB-UART converter...
As long it's not an old pink parallel port xD
Without .csv output or preferably an api, this is but a toy.
Thanks for the comment - every comment that helps to convince the manufacturer is valuable.
Eagerly awaiting part 2.
More eagerly awaiting the availability of the product in an online shop.
In progress, but please be patient, we want to be sure the manufacturer gets their head around the idea of listening to potential customers.
Need integration to esphome and/or home-assistant with local API, before I will buy.
There should be CSV output, but I wonder if the pdf might be able to be "read" by Chat GPT which would output what it "saw" in your format of choice? Edit: I just tried it with Claude and it told me that the resolution of the chart I gave it wasn't good enough for accurate reading. I'd like to see the PDF output of this instrument. If high enough resolution it may work.
Excellent video. Thank you. One thing, I think you should put a pure black of an inch just in front of the emitter and the receptor (spectrometer), the objetive is to achieve optical engagement without the reflection of other surfaces, in this case the rubber you use. The emitter projects its radiation on the rubber and contaminate part of the rays reach the recepto. Of course, there are a lot of other variables to control; e.g., vacuum, humidity, distance, air composition, etc., etc., but at least, I suggest, you can control the distance between the tubes. I mean: emitter + 0 mm + 2.54 mm (the output non-reflective tube) + 2.54 mm (air distance) + 2.54 mm (the input non-reflective tube) + 0 mm + spectrometer-receptor. Maybe, maybe not, it would improve the results. What do you think? Anyhow, I just want to thank you for your video; I would love to have that marvellous hardware you can get in China. I would make "gun shape form" or pointer, spectrometer; with a laser telemeter to adjust the efect of distance of the surrounding gases (mostly cases air.) I would make may own typical base measurements to stablish sets of spectrographic data base; as well the corrections due to distance, angle or another variable that would apply. And app and small devise like that would be easy for ordinary citizen usage than other portable radioactive spectrographs. It should be quite use full to very quick draft material checks: canvas, woods, metals, cristal, food, etc.,
So, what are you, Max Headroom's brother or something?
Pretty cool gadget, If I needed one, I would probably buy it.
The app is ok but if the device cannot provide output to extant non-proprietary tools then I'm not interested.
¿Y el Sol brilló por su ausencia?
And the Sun shone by its absence?
I want to get one as well. Having a CSV data output would be great as well because then we can run in through other applications or just save it in a database for future reference and calibration.
its a definite requirement for it to be useful. such a calculating cie-lab color temperature calculations.
You'll run into a dead end pretty soon when you can't to anything with the data you measured. Agreed. Not a total dealbreaker because that thing in that price range is less a scientific tool and more a fun nerdy gadget
Cool! Are there any miniature NIR or MIR spectrometers in a similar form factor?
What happens if you remove the diffuser? Might it be possible to attach to a telescope and look at spectra of individual stars?
Inquiring minds want to know. Hopefully you have another after the reverse engineering exercise? Thanks in advance.
I'm not sure how it would be focused down into the slit and how that would affect the measurement.
the diffusor is easily removed, but I that will effect the calibration of the intensity...
Cherenkov radiation comes from particles not gamma rays.
Ah! Using your own voice this time around?
Edit: Max Entropy 😂
No, Max is a human...
:-)
@@Posh-Arthur LOL - This channel is growing in leaps and bounds- excellent work!
The potential of this product is evident, but the manufacturer needs to enhance its software and address any issues. They should strive to create a highly marketable product, where the design and features are of utmost importance. Integrating AI capabilities into the software could take the product to the next level.
Brilliant video and product. I’d argue that they are locking out the CSV export whilst they figure out the business model. There’s maybe 2000 one off spectrometer hobbyists who’d buy this for home use and that’s the market done. I’m in already. However if you integrate it into another mass market volume product such as a vehicle or specialised lighting product then your market becomes scalable. I’d reckon that’s where this is headed.
Thank you for the comment. Some of my own thoughts...
Each time I use this device, I seem to find a new application. For example, our IR chroma-key video, it was useful for seeing how spectrally pure a commercial green screen actually was (answer, not very). Amateur film makers will find this useful and because of the low cost, photographers can now have a much better tool than the 3 color sensors that are normally used. Anyone involved in pro lighting is also a potential customer. Basic class room education is also opened up, instead of a high school having one $2000 system to share between all classes, there can be more devices available. Anyone involved in the print and finishing industry, QA technicians and product designers. The list just gets longer each time I think about it...
This device has earned a valuable place in my work bag, I am really strict about what I carry around but its really useful for far more things than I ever imagined.
As for the company, as a tech start-up, their core team are basically scientists and PhD's, so I hope that they can get the help they need with the product marketing going forward.
One issue that cheap array spectrometers suffer from is straylight, especially excess signal
In the blue/UV. Grading instruments can have order sorting filters and multiple gratings to eliminate. This one has some filtration on the pixels and a magic algorithm. I’d have done some tests with a broadband source and a thick bit of various schott coloured filters, see if you get any signal where you should see none. You could also check you “higher order effect” hypothesis by filtering the source so there is no light in that spectral region and then seeing if the higher order lines appear.
Calibrated, how, against what and for what sources?
Interesting little device. No numbers out is no sales made. No way to check noise floor, stray light etc. roll on part 2.
indeed. So much is not defined but that only means that there is more to learn...
Another fantastic video!
Even with the better accuracy and interesting technology in the TLM-2, I would still much, MUCH rather just make my own spectrometer so I could use software that's actually useful.
If I could use the TLM-2 with open source software, or if the company software didn't feel and look like spyware from 1998, it would be an instant buy.
So, Torchbearer can choose to gate-keep functional software behind a paywall, and get $0 of my money, or put out a useful product and at least get some of my money.
Let's see if they are responsive - I just emailed them with the video link...
@@project-326well, you already scared the living hell out of Bosean, hopefully they will take that good amount of honest into account for further reconsiderations :D
@@leandroebner1405 A little fear keep manufacturers honest and response to their customers needs. Actually, I have been impressed with the responsiveness of companies like Measall and Bosean. The winds of change, they are a blowin'.
Besides resolution, an issue of spectrometers using webcams is that the gain (amplitude) in various channels is not constant, due to processingin the webcam algorithm, so different spectra cannot be compared. Is this using a constant gain, so that I can calibrate and get good results? Without a calibration and constant gain, the spectra are useful only for looking at them, you cannot even measure the CRI of a LED light.
And what about the Garden spectrometer?
The TLM2 isn't using a webcam. They are buying a monochrome CMOS die and getting the QD's deposited onto the sensor directly before the passivization is added. I'm guessing that they are getting the image sensor vendor to do this for them in the fab as a custom version. The TLM2 appears to be pre-calibrated for level and that cannot be changed.
The little garden device will suffer from the issues that you mention, the levels for each of the color channels will be optimized for the 'best picture' for human eyes, not best optimization for photon energy. These types of sensors usually have some OTP ROM that allows the product level manufacturer to set up the color balance, the gain transfer function, etc and those settings will have already been burnt in before the creator of the LG device received the camera module.
The creator of the LG device has released that on AliExpress and there is a link to the store in a post in the community section of this channel.
any good systems engineer can help you change the size of any window regardless of whether it's allowed :p
any game hack creator can add a data extractor to existing software and will probably help you use cheatengine to do it with little effort, maybe for free. don't even have to get around any protections, it's easy mode.
brothel pink looks like a pretty good spectrum for growing plants
Thanks for the feedback!
Actually, there is an easy way to break into the UART connection to the App anyway. I will be detailing that in the next video. That way, can get the exact captured data.
Perhaps that LED is ideal for growing "brothel sprouts"...
A reasonable software in English is a prerequisite for international marketing.
Is it so difficult to remember the language and the COM port?
Is it that difficult to install a usable image export?
The one thing i don't understand is that if you make a product for "nerdy" people why do they go with windows as the OS for their applications?
STEM people are used to linux, some even talk Octave in their sleep 😀
Windows is over.
I'm a nerd and I use Windows.
Like you said, CSV export is pretty important. The other thing I'd like to see is the software being open source so there are no questions about its safety.
I don't think they would release their software open source, but perhaps an SDK is a good compromise...
wouldn’t mind buying if it is a little better I am interested in different light colours
great. love the style. love the color names.
Thanks so much!
I would be interested by the TM2 however no access to the data no purchase! put an open-source software on it pls. Finally the mini USB plug is outdated. Cables start to be harder to find.
I think they chose a mini-USB because it is now just a USB cable, it is the USB-Serial converter and people are less likely to plug in a standard USB cable buy accident. At least that's my conclusion...
@@project-326 I'm not sure to fully understand. usb to serial you normally plug it to a normal usb port on your computer it work with usb-C as well all Arduino like stuffs use that no issue. Now if i have to understand that they use a mini usb plug for a different purpose than usb that is a drama guaranteed recipe as someone will end plugging this in a computer usb plug generating a magic smoke emission.
i live in shenzhen... so i'm certainly going to get one....
It needs a notch filter and csv output. I wouldn't buy it without both of these features.
You should have made Max stutter or glitch audibly for authenticity. Then he would be more like Max Headroom.
good thinking :-)
An important note!! None of the lasers used (besides the green 532nm unit) use a frequency doubling crystal. The infrared lines are artifacts on the spectrometer.
Yep, we will be adding a correction to the part 2 video.
@@project-326 cool, looking forward to seeing it
This kind of affordable spectrometer is really useful for lighting designers and others invo!ved in architectural lighting design for confirmation of product specification. Also increasingly important in other areas of professional lighting such as photography and videography. So far the product seems pretty good for our kinds of use with sufficient resolution and accuracy. Typically the output format in PDF isOK if we have enough detail and refencesto ISO and CIE standards however CSV is necessary For calculating colour fidelity and also for melanopic effectiveness through standard tools freely available from IES and CIE. Price in the market is also important as will be thelevel of calibration against traceable standards to NIST or other international standards. Also how about recalibration? If it is cheap enough and calibration from new is warrantied for say 2 years then replace that would be good enough if the unit is cheap enough. Currently I need to replace my existing spectrophotometer as the company who made it are out of business and it cannot be recalibrated also there is no software support for it
These are all really good questions that I hope the manufacturer will be able to have answers too!
hey i'm looking for a setup to measure the elementary composition of a substance. how do i do this quickly and easily?
We recently did a video about achieving this using beta back-scattering. Please take a loom on the channel for that one.
hmm. the export functionality and an overall improved app could well be made by reverse engineering the protocol and some python.
I'm going to be looking at that, let's see if they decided to encrypt the serial data across the link...
Amazing little device, thank you for bringing it to us. Can't wait for part 2
Coming soon!
Liked & subscribed!
Really appreciate your testing of affordable micro spectrometers that can be used by science oriented diy'ers for all sorts of applications.
I'm particularly interested in greenhouse growing of edible crops over all 4 seasons. Especially the quality of light reaching plants through combinations of glass, clear plastic, shade cloth, and even artificial lighting sources.
I'm sure other application will occur to me as I progress in my diy homesteading experiments.
Thanks for your detailed analysis of product performance and cheeky & accurate observations about excessive capitalist marketing strategies that would hobble potential customers. (With all of the existential crises that we humans are facing in the 21st century, what is most needed are innovations that are affordable, full featured, extensible and, where possible, even open sourced - so that maximum global reach is achieved. Profits can come from widespread global market penetration & large volume deals with STEM-oriented organizations.)
Thank you! I hope the message get through too.
OMG. So with the ban of lamps in the reptile hobby in the US and EU coming down the pipe, these tools are sorely needed to keep our pets healthy.
Usually the specialist lamps get exceptions.
@@project-326 there’s this whole issue right now where halogen or incandescent lamps 125 watts or fewer are being erroneously classified as general service lamps, and not specialty lamps.
Zoomed who’s one of the biggest names in the space was told to pull their product off the shelves.
Sorry to add more stuff. 1. Use the TLM-2 to check safety glasses for bandpass and attenuation regions. 2. For the big color squatters and even Home Depot: use spectrometer to check
their color patches at the store with the final color of the applied paint to different surfaces. 3. I want to check for UV output for the Chinese made LED bar lamps I use at the desk for bright
white reading source, electronic assembly and soldering and video lighting. 4. Looks like around a 1cm diameter of the input diffuser. When you get sunlight, I am guessing
1316W/m^2 multiplied by 0.00007854 (area ratio) = 0.1068W/m^2 input in sunlight without pollution etc. With CSV data we can do the integration for calibration or atmospheric
effect measurements.
Thanks for all the hard work and I can understand the two week period between videos. It is greatly appreciated. Are the background squares 1cm in your TLM-2 videos?
Inquiring minds want to know.
This is great, the more applications the better, a tool is only useful if it has a job to perform!
I need to check on the mat, I have two, one is 1cm and the other is 1" (I do photography in 2 different locations)...
Very interesting product. Hope the mfr make available some tools or libraries to use this on Linux or for integration into other projects
I hope so too
I would be interested in one of these, but only if the suggested improvements in the video were made, and especially if the software for it was made to be open source. An additional suggestion would be for it to be USB-C compatible.
its using the old Mini-USB because its not USB, but serial UART. There is a USB-UART converter in the cable itself. Hopefully they can improve that too.
Sorry to be that guy but you should have locked the white balance on the camera shooting the test footage. It shifts noticeably when you change light sources.
Great work though - I appreciate the video!!
I use my phone to make the videos (don't have the kind of cash to be buying pro camera gear yet) and I can't fix the exposure or WB on that. For photos, there is a 'pro' mode that lets me adjust anything I want, but for video Its just a choice of two f-stops...
But I like the suggestion. Makes total sense to comment on that ^^
@@leandroebner1405 Yes, particularly when the subject matter is "optical technology"...
It drives me mad, I bought this XiaoMi phone because it has an enormous array of optics - never realized that video was going to have zero settings.
@@project-326 you can try using a third party app. Most of the HW supports manual features, it's just not implemented in the OEM firmware of camera apps. There's an android app called "open camera". Either you find it in your app store or you can search for an .APK file to use it. It's open source by Mark Harman
800-830nm line is the pump diode that drives the 1064nm that gets doubled.
Thank you for the feedback, other have pointed this out too, in part 2 of the video, we will be making some corrections.
Would be great if there was a macOS version of the software, in English.
Fantastic video Thanks a lot! Have you tried doing any absorption spectra?
We are looking at 'maybe' doing some raman spectroscopy, but that depends on the costs involved. We have been also doing some experiments with the spectra of various plasma. We might be able to think up some interesting experiments in that area if we get time.
I just found it on aliexpress, a few left and about $75 delivered to USA.
Ooops, Little Garden not TLM-2. I ordered the former, hope to see the latter soon!
Thanks, very thorough video. But there is one thing that annoys me: the glass breakage sound after the titles.
I try different experiments in each video for the chapter titles, the results are not always ideal.
Thank you for the feedback!
Buy some diffraction grating from Edmund Scientific/optics.
I strongly suspect that buying ANYTHING from Edmund Scientific is going to be more than the price of this whole product...
Question, how many years would a geiger counter with j321 TUBE , be reliable/functional/accurate if the geiger counter is stored unused compared to if the geiger counter is kept on 24 hrs per day as a background monitoring device ? ?
GM tubes have VERY long lifetimes - typically in the region of 10^10 counts for a glass sealed tube. With a 10x typical background, this equates to over 3000 years!
@@project-326 but does the accuracy of the GM tube worsen over the course of 5-10 years and does it matter if it is left permanently on to monitor background or if it is left off and stored for emergency ?
Hi any update on when this will be available on Amazon?
not yet, I will send a message to them on Monday to see if they can give me an update.
Thanks for the reminder.
@@project-326 hi did you already send a message to them?😅
@@electrobus5095 Every week...
I am making a new video that includes this device and I am going to include a segment that will encourage viewers to bombard their email address with requests to buy this device. Hopefully they might finally believe that there is demand for this outside of China!
Exciting. I want one but can't find any place to buy it. A link to where you got yours would ne nice
As mentioned in the video, it isn't available in the west yet, but the company is planning to release on Amazon soon (part 2 of the video is planned for when that happens).
I added the TaoBao store details where I got this product from to the video description, but this only works from China...
9:31 Mini B USB 🤮
Yes but this is actually a serial UART connection - the supplied cable is a standard USB to UART converter. I guess they feel that Mini-USB will reduce the changes of anyone plugging directly to a PC via a different cable.
How does this unit compare the the Changhong H2 mobile phone, which had a spectrometer built in? I cannot find one in my current location, but maybe you could find a second hand H2 and do some comparison tests?
Also, have you seen Jerry De Vos' implementation of an open source plastics spectrometer project?
The cell phone 'spectrometers' just used the AMS sensors that only were able to discriminate a handful of wavelengths, usually less than 10.
@@project-326 _ Were there other Chinese mobiles that includes spectrometers?
Here is a link for Jerry's DIY project.
www.youtube.com/@jerzeek
This is indeed a fantastic find. Many thanks for the video. I will be at the opening gate to buy one as soon as Amazon has them online.
I want one to measure twilight colorimetry to match a paper I did almost 50 years ago. Was in the process of building a DIY spectrometer, but now
I can relax and await the opening bell for the TLM-2. Another test I'm interested in. Variable incandescent lamp to measure blackbody curve vs
temperature for calibration. Question: Has anyone checked for heating in the diffuser as a possible source for the IR contribution?
You are wrong for 405 nm laser. It is InGaN laser meaning there is no way IR can be generated. What you see is second order peak from the grating. Spectroscopy basics.
Yes, we figured that out in the end, we will be adding a correction to the next video.
Thanks for the feedback.
@@project-326 sorry for the harsh comment. You guys do a great job. PS. I am a material scientist, you can ask me something
Really looking forward to part 2, and ready to order one to satisfy my curious-yet-poor self! Amazing video!
Awesome! Thank you!
Is this sensitive enough to calibrate displays with?
it should be, it gives a pretty large result when placed against a display that is white.
I hope that helps!
Re the artificial light ..you may have chosen "silicon enhanced "
That's so weird, the second pink light we almost called "Silicone Enhanced", to keep with the theme of the first one.
If it has diffraction grating, why does it need quantum dots?
because of the very short optical path, the resolution would be terrible without the QDs. Your question was a really good one and perfectly valid, so I sent your question to the manufacturer, here is their response:
"The reason we utilize both is that either of them can not provide enough resolution solo. The QDs we synthesized have too broad absorption bands to resolve the spectrum with high resolution and wide wavelength range. The same thing happened to the diffraction grating due to the small size of the device we try to achieve. Then we decided to combine the two techniques, and got amazing results."
wow can you move your mic away from your mouth and turn down the gains 17:00 the mouth noises are grossing me out.
Max had a bit of a cold during one part of the recording... Sorry for that.