Yea, but good luck having a browser-based B-Rep kernel or some such. Seems like GrabCAD, etc. are doing back-end processing -> polygons in the browser using three.js, etc.
Shapesmith is also doing backend nurbs (OpenCASCADE + erlang server) with front-end rendering.
I think it would be possible to implement nurbs (or brep) in javascript, once there's an open source (and maintainable/legible) library that actually does nurbs intersection.
OpenNURBS doesn't count because Rhino has kept all the interesting bits to themselves. BRLCAD has had people from GSoC implement some of the remaining closed-source parts of the OpenNURBS library, so maybe they have had some recent progress on this front?
OpenCASCADE doesn't count because trying to extract just what you need is like trying to rewrite the multiple decades of software piled up in there..
Edit: Nick, didn't we have this exact conversation before in some HN comments like two years ago? I feel like we did and I feel bad for not remembering the url. Maybe this?
The $800 price tag was just a kickstarter only price, since we were still largely in the development phase we weren't sure of final pricing. Now it looks like a UV capable scientific instrument with a chinese grating would cost around $400, if you want the same optics but U.S. made it would be around $900.
I think daniel_reetz put it right with "good enough". This isn't a lab or scientific instrument. But its cheap enough to use as a teaching tool, to get people interested and in-the-know about light and its connection to common life.
using a 2D sensor, you could actually just block one half of the slit at a time with your sample, and let the other half of the slit pass through unchanged... that way you could get a calibration shot for every sample, assuming the dynamic range of the sensor was high enough that the calibration lines didn't bleed (or conversely that your sample didn't get buried in noise because exposure wasn't high enough)
You want a "peaky" light source to build the spectral response model, xenon or deuterium flashbulbs are cheap on amazon... I would lean towards using deuterium because I think the relative power of the peak to the blackbody floor (the rest of the light freqs) is less than the xenon, so you'd have less chance of the peaks dominating your sample with a less sensitive webcam type sensor
Meh, it's more than just synthesis. Synthesis costs are falling faster than Moores law, too; but you don't get things like epigenetic modifications or packing for free, and that tech basically doesn't exist yet.
