Spectral Workbench
question:spectral-workbench

Support Public Lab Today! For the last twelve years, Public Lab has hosted SpectralWorkbench.org so that people everywhere can calibrate and analyze their spectra. Unfortunately, current circumstances have led us to scale back and take certain services offline. SpectralWorkbench.org will go offline as of August 15, 2022. The SpectralWorkbench platform runs on a combination of volunteer and paid labor by the many people that build, maintain, and operate it via Public Lab. This is an effective combination thanks to the culture of Public Lab's Coding Community. Public Lab's web ecosystem, including PublicLab.org, MapKnitter.org, SpectralWorkbench.org, Infragram.org and associated projects, takes 20 hours a week from three Code Coordinators and our sysadmin. While cost effective, it is not free. Web hosting and server costs for SpectralWorkbench are approximately $1000 per month. We are doing our best to sustain programming and support for our community, and we need your help. Thank you for being part of our community. We can't wait to be back online with you. Support Public Lab by making a donation today. ###What is Spectral Workbench? [SpectralWorkbench.org](https://spectralworkbench.org) is a web based application to collect, archive, share, and analyze spectral data, for Public Lab [DIY spectrometers](/wiki/spectrometer) and other spectrometers. With it, you can: * connect your USB [Desktop Spectrometry Kit](/wiki/desktop-spectrometry-kit-3-0) * scan and save samples * wavelength calibrate your spectrometer * plot light intensity as a function of wavelength (average digital consumer cameras have a range of 400 to 700 nm) * create sets of multiple spectra to visually compare and analyze scans * download CSV data for offline analysis * view others' data and discuss * find similar data in [a database of over 60k spectra](https://spectralworkbench.org/stats) No download is required -- just a web connection. The Chrome browser works best, but most standard-compliant browsers are supported. It is possible to use from an Android smartphone, preferably with the Firefox browser which allows you to specify which camera to look through. **** ###Contents * [Learn to use the software](/wiki/spectral-workbench-usage) * Learn about the [available tools](/wiki/spectral-workbench-tools) * Learn about [Calibration](/wiki/spectral-workbench-calibration) * Learn about the [Snapshots system](/wiki/spectral-workbench-snapshots) * Learn about the [Operations system](/wiki/spectral-workbench-operations) * [Spectrometry in general](/wiki/spectrometer) * [Applications & uses](/wiki/spectral-analysis) * [Construction](/wiki/spectrometer-construction) * [Desktop Spectrometry Kit](/wiki/desktop-spectrometry-kit-3-0) * [Foldable Mini-Spectrometer](/wiki/foldable-spec) * [Troubleshooting](/wiki/spectral-workbench-help) * [API Docs](/wiki/spectral-workbench-api) **** ###Intro video ## Browsers Spectral Workbench should work on Chrome (in Windows/Mac/Linux/Android, but not iOS), Firefox (Windows/Mac/Linux/Android), or Opera (Android). It may work on other browsers and we are working on expanding coverage; read more on this page: https://github.com/publiclab/spectral-workbench.js/issues/87 **** ## Development Do you code? The codebase of Spectral Workbench is available at https://github.com/publiclab/spectral-workbench. The server is written in Ruby on Rails, with a lot of client side code in JavaScript. You can read about [the JavaScript API here](/wiki/spectral-workbench-api). We really need more developers, so if you are interested, please get involved! A great place to start is the "plots-dev" mailing list for software developers: http://publiclab.org/wiki/developers **** ## FAQ We're collecting and working our way through a range of questions about Spectral Workbench -- if you can contribute your own questions, or answer others', please do! [questions:spectral-workbench] **** ## Troubleshooting If you feel you've encountered a bug with the software -- very possible! Please look through existing issues listed here, file a new one if you don't see something similar, and help to add any observations to existing issues shown here. Thanks for helping improve this open source software! [questions:spectral-workbench-issues] ...


Author Comment Last activity Moderation
warren "Awesome! -- Post to this group at plots-spectometry@googlegroups.com   Public Lab mailing lists (http://publiclab.org/lists) are great for ..." | Read more » about 6 years ago
msolomon "Thank you both for your suggestions! I have it working now. " | Read more » about 6 years ago
warren "Hi, I believe this relates to the angle of your camera in the box. If you try to point it further up or down, you should be able to center the spec..." | Read more » about 6 years ago
Pushpaw "I suspect you have a problem with the vertical alignment of your camera. With the camera that originally shipped with the kit there wasn't room to ..." | Read more » about 6 years ago
wangdydu "I found how to solve this problem, and it seems to be simple enough. Zoom in, zoom further in , and if your smartphone has M mode, use it to make s..." | Read more » about 6 years ago
wangdydu "I found how to solve this problem, and it seems to be simple enough. Zoom in, zoom further in , and if your smartphone has M mode, use it to make s..." | Read more » about 6 years ago
jkrampen "I was having the same problem with my spectrum always going vertical, but I fixed it by using Paint 3D to rotate and crop the original image. I sav..." | Read more » about 6 years ago
warren "Ah, i think you may need to shrink them in size. Extremely large images can choke the system which converts the images to graphed data, unfortunate..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
ava_porter "I had the same... " | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "Hi, I think you could use the JavaScript version, SpectralWorkbench.js, to get an offline CSV of data - https://github.com/publiclab/spectral-workb..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "hi, i believe this is a new bug! Would you be able to open an issue at https://github.com/publiclab/spectral-workbench/issues please, and we can tr..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "hi, i believe this is a new bug! Would you be able to open an issue at https://github.com/publiclab/spectral-workbench/issues please, and we can tr..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
McL "I see that you can swap it (180deg) but can you rotate it (90 or 270)? I don't see that. " | Read more » over 6 years ago
McL "I'm am having a similar issue here: trying to upload and cal for the 1st time, on a paper spectrometer with a Pixel phone. No matter if I check th..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
Pushpaw "Both of the examples you link to are over exposed. The over exposure is clipping off the sharp peaks in the spectrum. You can tell if your spectra ..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "So, you'll need to subtract a "clear" sample as a baseline -- there is some documentation at #absorption -- hope that helps! " | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "They're recalculated when you perform a calibration, but also they are averaged together and then limited to 4 to try to maintain the significant d..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
troyb "Hi again. I only had limited time to look at the code. I'm not great with Javascript. Two things stood out. First, it is a little odd that the orig..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "Hi, @troyb - we do have a new Lego enclosure which is a step closer to the kind of rigidity @stoft has demonstrated in wood -- we're actually phasi..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "Hi, the new Lego version does a lot to address rigidity issues, and your recent version of the DSK's webcam will fit in the new enclosure. If you'r..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
Ag8n "Most spectra mismatches occur because of the light source. So, say you are trying to get the spectra of holmium oxide glass ( a common standard). ..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
troyb "There are definitely decimal values that don't seem quite right. Thanks for pointing to the code. I'll try to have a look in the next few days. Ap..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "Ok, here is the averaging: https://github.com/publiclab/spectral-workbench.js/blob/7b52a773650951ab3a2b54c6ad60f8f117a6d72d/src/SpectralWorkbench..." | Read more » over 6 years ago
warren "Wow, doesn't it look like the calibrated values are losing precision? One thing I think is happening where you see the .95 decimals is that it's a..." | Read more » over 6 years ago