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Avantes Inc. was granted funding in 2017 from State of Colorado to develop an internship program to introduce one STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) undergraduate student to the photonics industry. Avantes took an interdisciplinary approach and developed a program that melded Avantes optical instruments with software development for embedded systems and machines.
That internship kicked off a new phase of development at Avantes US with the birth of the AvaPortability project that has extended to partnerships with miniature laser experts, beginning to expand the DLL kit and sample program libraries to include Linux, the prototyping of a variety of application specific accessories, and other initiatives that aim to support the design of handheld and/or portable spectroscopy systems.
The Internship that Started it All
The 2017 Internship project at Avantes was to facilitate the development of a mobile microprocessor-based device for absorption spectroscopy field measurements. The goal was to demonstrate the application development capabilities and portability of the Avantes platform using the Avantes Linux-based dynamic linking library.
The project delivered a proof of concept design using Avantes optical instruments and commercially available peripheral components. The QT creator environment 4.0. using the existing Linux-based dynamic linking library provides communication with the AvaSpec-Mini2048 compact spectrometer and the small form-factor AvaLight-XE Mini pulsed xenon flash lamp light source. The flexibility of the Raspberry Pi 3B embedded system was paired with a 7-inch touchscreen display to create the mobile user interface. Off-the-shelf battery packs provide power within the prototype housing which has a standard 10 mm cuvette slot for convenient and rapid acquisition of spectral absorbance/ transmission measurements.