From the Hackernewsletter:
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It seems to be a camera based instrument, worse yet it looks it has a color camera . As such, it is probably 8-10 bits with three very difficult to calibrate response curves and very poor linearity.
This is not a serious instrument and the data is very likely not reliable.
Consumer cameras and especially at the low end, are not built for linearity. They are designed to make nice looking pictures of friends and family.
If you replaced the camera with a monochrome machine vision camera, it might be a tiny bit better. But even the machine vision camera is going to be a kluge and it will cost a lot more as well. At that point, you can just as well look for a proper spectrometer.
Bottom line, this is not something you should use to collect data that you plan to publish.
It might be suitable for demonstrating something in a high school or elementary school science class.
If you are serious about spectrometers, check this out: On Spectrometers, Linear Response and Reproducibility (TCD1304 Sensor with linear response and differential 16 bit AFE)
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