Must this really involve a smartphone? Couldn't it just show the number on a 7-segment LCD? Would be much longer lasting and not dependent on app and smartphone version of the month and probably more convenient too than plugging it in, starting an app, having the app ask to be updated, having wet fingers since it's in a kitchen, ...
A smartphone has plenty of computing power and the app can be easily updated, giving off more flexibility to interpret raw sensor data. It also removes the need for a battery.
Smartphones make things much easier for the developer.
Maybe the next version will have a display to show the number without a smartphone.
That would be a valid complaint if it was a commercial product, but since it's just a journal article I think they just designed it however was convenient for them. Also, this way it seems like they could just connect an off-the-shelf sensor part with a usb c connector and call it a day, rather than having to connect the sensor to a esp8266, display, and battery.
> The sensor consists of three components: (i) a small potentiostat device, (ii) an interface allowing connection to a smartphone for monitoring and control, and (iii) the sensor (an N-doped GrNPs/ePAD and detection chamber)
It sounds like the smartphone isn't a display. It's the main driver, data collector, and filter of the device.
> Soleh et al. tested the device on six samples of dried chilies dissolved in an ethanol-based solution. They placed a drop in the detection chamber and found that the device could accurately measure concentrations of capsaicin in all six samples.
So in order to use this right now, you need to dry and dissolve the chili? This definitely doesn't sound like something a normal consumer could use by e.g squeezing a chili and putting a few drops into the device... or does it?
Most chiles used by consumers, especially the really spicy ones, come dried? The only fresh chiles I regularly see at grocery stores are jalapenos, whereas I often see up to a dozen varieties of dried ones.
I think a hotness measuring device would be more likely used by enthusiasts who grow their own chilies and want to find out how hot thy turned out - especially since the same breed may be significantly hotter or milder depending on when you harvest and what conditions they grew in.
That makes sense, if it's targeted for gardeners. However, I suspect that the reason it uses dissolved dried peppers is because that's the easiest way to do it, as the capsaicin would dissolve into solution and be measurable that way. I'm not seeing how you could as easily measure the capsaicin content in a fresh chile pepper; you're not gonna get the capsaicin to go into concentration so that eliminates most of the typical measuring methods.
Separately, I do suspect that a lot of the serious gardeners growing chile peppers are already drying chiles anyway, as you get a lot more in a harvest than you'd want to eat immediately and the dried form stores and travels better. You can air dry them, oven dry them, use a dehydrator, etc. So I think the biggest problem here is the time lag before being able to make the measurement, depending on your drying method.
In a typical London grocery store (not supermarket) there will be anything between 2 and 7 varieties of fresh chilli, plus 2 or more sweet peppers and probably just one bag of "chilli flakes" of unspecified origin...
The big spice store near me in NYC (Kalustyans) sells well over a hundred varieties of dried, flaked, and powdered chiles. This photo shows roughly one-third of their chile section: https://goo.gl/maps/o3B4nZBikZCTmHFXA There's no way they could possibly stock that much fresh chiles because of shelf longevity issues.
Also, anecdotally, I tend to cook a variety of cuisines from around the world, and the good majority of recipes use powdered, flaked, or dried chile peppers. When raw peppers are called for it's generally commonly available stuff like jalapenos, cayenne, and habanero.
All of that is to say that for the serious chile head, the kind of person who is the target market for this device, the vast majority of the chile peppers they're gonna have access to, especially the mail-ordered ones, are gonna come in dried form, so it makes sense to optimize the device for analyzing dried chiles. I'm a bit of a chile head myself and I wouldn't need to bother measuring the common fresh chiles that are available in grocery stores; I already have a good understanding of them (and frankly none of them are really that spicy in the grand scheme of things; this bag of dried ghost chilis that I have, on the other hand, I'd like to see a measurement on).
I regularly buy fresh habaneros and bird’s eye. The larger store outside the city even has fresh ghost peppers (tried them once, spicier than habanero, but lacking all their flavor).
Outside of specialty online stores I haven’t even seen dried ones.
I live in Sweden and grocery stores here don't usually have a lot of chilli peppers and certainly not many hot ones. But the hot ones I have found here (mainly habanero and ghost peppers) have been fresh.
The only dried chilies I've come across are ancho.
> In fact, it has been estimated that the results [for the Scoville scale] from different laboratories could vary by as much as 50 percent.
Not really that important. +/-50% is no big deal. The range is pretty wide. Even with 50% error you're in no risk of confusing, say, a Jalapeno pepper for Cayenne. And those are both way-too-spicy peppers to my mom, or kinda everyday peppers in my household.
The hot sauces that I personally use cover about three orders of magnitude, I'm sure.
> Not really that important. +/-50% is no big deal.
By your anecdotal judgement, sure. But for the rest of industry proper that actually cares about quantitative objectivity, there's ASTA Method 21.3 which supplants "trained tasting experts" for HPLC.
This reminds me of an incident during a family get together where I was showing my mother my one of my chilli plants.
It's a wonderful cultivar which gives yellow fruit with a lemony flavour and about ten times the heat of a jalapeno.
My sister overheard my description of the flavour and heard me mention it was the mildest of the varieties I have. She interpreted this as it being a mild chilli pepper with citrus flavour and insisted on sampling one. Despite me asking if she was really sure she ended up quite upset.
Would the Scoville scale be nicer if it used logarithmic numbers instead of linear? Would make it easier to compare something that was a 4 and a 6, for example.
It would take 500w of power to double the loudness of a 50w amp, all other things being relatively equal. So a 100w amp is about 12% louder than a 50w amp.
Of course this means you have more headroom with 100w. But it’s also why a lot of guitar players prefer 50w as you can get to an overdriven tone without being as loud. And why in studio environments, 15w-25w amps are adored as you can push them to get overdrive but not be as loud as a 50w or 100w - but still pretty loud.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 69.0 ms ] threadthe purpose is to provide value to the owners of the app.
Smartphones make things much easier for the developer.
Maybe the next version will have a display to show the number without a smartphone.
> The sensor consists of three components: (i) a small potentiostat device, (ii) an interface allowing connection to a smartphone for monitoring and control, and (iii) the sensor (an N-doped GrNPs/ePAD and detection chamber)
It sounds like the smartphone isn't a display. It's the main driver, data collector, and filter of the device.
So in order to use this right now, you need to dry and dissolve the chili? This definitely doesn't sound like something a normal consumer could use by e.g squeezing a chili and putting a few drops into the device... or does it?
From the abstract https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsanm.0c02079
> Thus, this platform shows excellent potential for the development of portable sensors for capsaicin and future extension to different analytes.
Maybe that means the delivery method still has to be improved.
Separately, I do suspect that a lot of the serious gardeners growing chile peppers are already drying chiles anyway, as you get a lot more in a harvest than you'd want to eat immediately and the dried form stores and travels better. You can air dry them, oven dry them, use a dehydrator, etc. So I think the biggest problem here is the time lag before being able to make the measurement, depending on your drying method.
Also, anecdotally, I tend to cook a variety of cuisines from around the world, and the good majority of recipes use powdered, flaked, or dried chile peppers. When raw peppers are called for it's generally commonly available stuff like jalapenos, cayenne, and habanero.
All of that is to say that for the serious chile head, the kind of person who is the target market for this device, the vast majority of the chile peppers they're gonna have access to, especially the mail-ordered ones, are gonna come in dried form, so it makes sense to optimize the device for analyzing dried chiles. I'm a bit of a chile head myself and I wouldn't need to bother measuring the common fresh chiles that are available in grocery stores; I already have a good understanding of them (and frankly none of them are really that spicy in the grand scheme of things; this bag of dried ghost chilis that I have, on the other hand, I'd like to see a measurement on).
Outside of specialty online stores I haven’t even seen dried ones.
The only dried chilies I've come across are ancho.
Not really that important. +/-50% is no big deal. The range is pretty wide. Even with 50% error you're in no risk of confusing, say, a Jalapeno pepper for Cayenne. And those are both way-too-spicy peppers to my mom, or kinda everyday peppers in my household.
The hot sauces that I personally use cover about three orders of magnitude, I'm sure.
By your anecdotal judgement, sure. But for the rest of industry proper that actually cares about quantitative objectivity, there's ASTA Method 21.3 which supplants "trained tasting experts" for HPLC.
It's a wonderful cultivar which gives yellow fruit with a lemony flavour and about ten times the heat of a jalapeno.
My sister overheard my description of the flavour and heard me mention it was the mildest of the varieties I have. She interpreted this as it being a mild chilli pepper with citrus flavour and insisted on sampling one. Despite me asking if she was really sure she ended up quite upset.
Look at how useless decibels are for actually talking about sound.
Every article has to re-explain them.
I'd argue the biggest problem with noise pollution, which does a lot of harm to people and the environment, is it's logarithmic scale.
Scoville are about fun though so telling someone they normally have a 6 and this is just a 8 might be fun. The confusion might work in it's favour.
I guess for sound too people appear confused. For example I’ve met numerous people that think a 100w amplifier is twice as loud as a 50w.
1. 2x as loud
2. 10x as powerful (from sound pressure level)
Of course this means you have more headroom with 100w. But it’s also why a lot of guitar players prefer 50w as you can get to an overdriven tone without being as loud. And why in studio environments, 15w-25w amps are adored as you can push them to get overdrive but not be as loud as a 50w or 100w - but still pretty loud.
https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Nov/chili.html