4 pointsby kwitczak4 hours ago2 comments
  • chabes2 hours ago
    I built a prototype “digital nose” almost a decade ago, inspired by this blog post https://web.archive.org/web/20180513090020/http://www.maskau...

    I have a friend with Chrons, IBS, and a handful of other gut issues. He wants me to build something like this to help self-diagnose acute issues as they arise. Yes, a fart classifier.

    I want to use a smell classifier to identify ripeness levels in agriculture.

    I haven’t tested to see if this is even feasible, but I’d like to also use a tool like this for pest scouting in agriculture. If the sensors are sensitive enough to detect small amounts of fungi, arthropod activity, or hormonal shifts, this could be useful for early detection in integrated pest management systems.

    • limelan hour ago
      We conducted research with local universities, and the digital nose was able to detect the presence of pests in oat flakes and beans (two different species).

      When we published the white paper ( https://sniphi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Sniphi_digital... ), we expected a queue of agricultural companies interested in the technology. However, pests apparently aren’t “sexy” enough to capture attention.

      We observed the same reaction with bananas — fresh vs. overripe, like in the video. Technically interesting, but no one saw clear business potential.

      So now we are looking for use cases that are more obvious and compelling from a business perspective. Any ideas?

  • limel3 hours ago
    The problem is not whether we can digitize the sense of smell, but that no industrial process currently relies on it by default. The real challenge is identifying the first scalable use case that proves measurable business value (sniphi team member here).