Started 28th August 2021
Everyone would like a spectrometer, point at things, learn of their chemical composition. There's quite a lot of citizen scientist projects on t'internet. I bought "Handheld Spectroscope Light Emission Spectroscopy Spectrum Physics Science Hobby" off ebay.
This device is based on a prism and is built around a tube; the prism is visible at one end; the other end, upon investigation, has a narrow slit in. You point the slit end at the target and look through the prism end. All obvious, but I looked through the wrong end - because the slit looks a bit like a small lens.
There is a slider which moves a lens inside the tube for focusing. Having removed the slit end, there's the problem of how to get it back inline with the prism - the seam in the plastic tube is useful for this.
A bit more disassembly reveals the full size of the prism and the lens from the middle of the tube.
It works, but is qualitative, toy level. Not easy to extract an example photograph of a spectrum.
Comments
References
How to build a DIY Raspberry Pi Spectrometer using a Picamera and Spectroscope
Prism Spectrometer - Wikipedia