What was originally an Indiegogo project and dream of Isabel Hoffman and Dr. Stephen Watson is now a company backed with nearly $400,000 and a public release due in November of 2014 (now pushed to Q1 of 2015).
Possible Pros:
- Knowing how many calories a food has rather than guessing
- Knowing what ingredients and possible allergens are in a food
- App to quickly sync with your phone
- With the planned size that of a hand it’ll be very mobile
- Cool factor (who doesn’t want a spectrometer on their key chain?)
- Size, following the newsletter and updates they have been having difficulties getting the product to the desired size
- Battery life. If it is the planned size and it’s running a spectrometer what kind of battery life will it have?
- Price, although the Indiegogo units were as cheap as $150 there is a planned yearly subscription fee for using the service
All and all it’s too soon to tell if TellSpec will live up to its promises but it will definitely be interesting to see what happens in the first quarter of 2015.
