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?

iam also interested in trying this eventually, i think it can be used to identify alkaloids.



idk i didn't see anything about MASS-spectrometry, is this a more advanced method ??

To my very limited understanding... (so this might be wrong)

The light is reflected from the sample, and then 'refracted idk' into a rainbow spectrum.
Basically, the substances reflect different rainbows that can be compared and identified.

Cool sight! Thanks for sharing and bringing this up.

Let us know if you do!

I'm sure someone could provide a definitive answer, but I believe a mass spectrometer is a more advanced piece of equipment. Even so I still wonder if this would suffice? My understanding is the same as yours, but I don't see why this wouldn't provide some kind of useable reading.

I'll place an order for this after the move (about a week or so) and let people know how it works. Even if it isn't ideal for analyzing alkaloids I'd like to try it out for other applications.

On a related note, does anyone here have any experience with DIY GC and LC systems? They require a much higher budget and some technical know-how but even so it'd be cool to know if anyone here has had success.

What you really want: a RamanPi

Interesting thread.

I was also thinking about the new smartphones which have IR in them now. I wonder what kind of frequencies it reaches, compared to professonal FTIR... Would be awesome if an app could be developed to do analysis with the phone. Maybe there is some technological barrier though with phone IR, and we'd have to look into something like you linked.. Or something like this:

https://www.kickstarter....cket-molecular-sensor-fo

Either way I definitely think we should put some energy into such DIY/home analysis methods. Let's keep such discussions alive

there has been quite of bit of research done in the area of miniaturization of analytical instrumentation (I was involved with some, with CE-MS), with lab-on-a-chip. Purdue made some working mass spec prototypes which were no larger than a small microwave, one was about the size of a shoebox.

the thing about mass spec is, unlike other forms of spectrometry, it requires high vacuum to prevent ion collisions. this adds to the complexity of the format.

your typical FTIR spec uses an 'interferometer', which is a bit more complex than an IR LED and CMOS camera with its IR filter removed. It uses a fixed wavelength laser, and usually has a nitrogen purge inlet.
but keep in mind, these design considerations are implimented for high sensitivity applications, i.e. quality control, and scientific research. if your end goal is to just explore spectrometry and have fun with it, DIY specs are promising.

@ benzyme - ok, I hear you and given your knowledge and contributions in the area of analysis I agree that most OTC tech is not going to cut it but I have a question and potentially we can come up with something novel and useful.

Given that the devices in question are somewhat broadband in nature is there no way we can home in, zoom if you will, to a part of the spectrum that is useful. In the same kind of way as a pregnancy test works (have you opened and inspected one? Pretty cool!).

I read about rt in chromatography and wonder if one could use something like a standard of let's say thh and code this in to an app in many ways. For example have code measure the rt from the image... Or perhaps we can stimulate/resonate/excite the substance in question in a way that can not be mistaken for a false hit.

I'm sorry it sounds so abstract. I am well in to electronics and coding and prototyping etc and I just wonder about various properties of certain substances that can be exploited even just uv time lapse or whatever. I would like to understand better what properties I can measure with the electronic devices that I have access to or better put what measurable properties are unique to these plants and what are they? Light frq, resonance, color change.

I have an abstract analogy, MFj do a unit that measures length of coax and impedance also resonant frequency of an element.
So just by sending volts down the wire it can use time and wave analysis to determine the length. I guess it's easy enough as we have the constant speed of light. Further it can hit a conductor with a varied band of frequencies and determine the resonant frequency by listening for the "note" that sounds loudest.

So is there a physical/chemical/electrical/audible or visual property that the spice possesses that can be exploited to these ends?
I wonder what a full audio frequency right through to rf UHF say 500Mhz sweep would reflect from a sample of water as opposed to ethanol or ipa and then further with different things suspended in it.

Audio devices are very sensitive on modern phones and the computer is awesome.
Fast Fourier and away perhaps we make a cradle to sit a sample in and rest the device on top and it does the audio spectrum and graphs the reflected sound by amplitude.

I'm lost but I am keen to find new and innovative ways to find things out. If the ancients figured there were maoi alks in a vine then perhaps they possessed some tech we never heard of or even some ability to physically detect things we have forgotten or evolved to not do any more.

Food for thought. Do crystals that fluffy and small have a resonant frequency that's useful? Are they glowing bright on some plane or other just outside our perception? I swear I could smell tryptamine the other night in the woods when I was cycling..

That's really impressive. I didn't even know that 3d printers were openly available to the general public. Do you have any experience with this? I'd love to look into this a future project one day.



I've been curious about that myself. A pocket-sized unit such as that would be really cool to have. I feel it's important for people to have first hand access to that kind of thing. I know I'd go crazy with one of those. I'd find endless amusement in scanning everything in sight.

There is this though



That's pretty interesting; any idea where that project is at now?

Thanks for the info, definitely clears things up for me. Good to know DIY is a viable option here! I've only just begun exploring spectrometry but I feel like I've been totally sucked in. There's so many practical and useful applications for it!

After I receive the kit I'll do some random tests and share my results with yall.

Glad to see that this is relevant, great to know there's an interest in this sort of thing here!

Just wanted to let you all know that Ive emailed the staff with a few questions and Im just waiting to hear back before placing the order. Havent forgotten about this!