Collaborate and design new instruments

What kind of instrumentation do you have in mind? Sensor technology is extremely vast. Is there a direction that you are favouring?

Mike

My interest is in physical and chemical sensing mechanisms. While physical sensors have limited range, chemical sensors extend from atom to molecules and combinations of them in complex manner.

Hence, greater emphasis is on chemical (including bio chemicals) sensors in miniature, that are of multiple chemical responses, high dynamic range, fast, low power or zero power consuming type, long lasting and rather cheap to remain affordable.

It may be a good idea to discuss only one or two directions and not many at a time. Even then it is a big field to explore.

Electronic nose perhaps is an ideal point to start with.

Chemical sensor and electronic nose are still big!

How we quantify a smell? Sweet, nice, bad... all be sensed with the electronic nose?

How do we quantify the types of smells? The smell of sesame oil is nice, and the smell of fish and chip are nice too, do we want to distinguish them?

How many types of smell should be detected?

AC Wing.

Scientifically speaking, we measure chemical concentration levels in ppb or ppm per volume concentration level in the bulk of the material. What makes brain to trigger and how much reaction it causes to brain can be measured by recording brain response signals. If you wish to replicate the brain and human or animal nose sensors then you have to moderate the response of the artificial sensor in identical manner. Whatever goes to brain is electronic signal is the real measure of it.

Seems to me it is moving further away from electronics and more toward mechanical, steam, hydraulic, what's wrong when my car makes this funny noise, blah, blah, blah.

I guess that's what people are most interested in but I know I have lost interest in most of what goes on here these days.

It is good time that car comes with vibration sensor and signal analyzer to let you pin point where the problem is or how to get it rectified. It is not going to be very expensive as cars already use powerful computer and need only sensors and some extra software. Good point.

Count me in. I am in solar energy industry and is associated with design and developing alternative energy application for industries and agricultural needs.My contact id is: ckusbd@gmail.com. How about a listing of instruments so that we can begin supporting activities. Regards. Chandu Krishnamurthi

Are you designing and manufacturing solar cells?

No. I am into whole range of applications where sensors could really improve performance and also bring down cost.

Water treatment plants use various Ozone sensors to monitor disinfection performance. These sensors are about the least reliable equipment in the plant. Most sensors use UV absorption principle. The lamp doesn't last very long or get dirty. Some units use a small vacuum pump with its own problems.

This is not a million unit a year business but at a few thousands dollars each, a few thousands units a year is a reasonable business.

Sensor for UV can be designed to be long lasting one. However, Lamp will have its own life as its material will keep changing its property in time. Vacuum UV sources can last 4000-40000 hours and perhaps new UV LEDs may last 50000 hours. Quartz for fused silica is an excellent window material for vacuum UV.

I am working on high voltage ns pulser for pathogen and bacteria elimination from water. This technology is well known and instruments are expensive so will be useful only for large plants. It requires 100,000V 100A pulse of 100ns to 1000ns into fluid to kill pathogens. Equipment becomes room size and power requirement is pretty high.