Developing a mobile app for remote access to and data analysis of spectra

Vibrational spectroscopy is a non-destructive analytical method that can be used to analyse a wide range of materials. A vibrational spectrum contains information on the chemical structure of the sample being analysed, which can be recorded rapidly. With hand held mobile device technology being considered as a relatively mature market, there is an excellent opportunity to combine vibrational spectroscopy with mobile devices for in situ analysis of samples. There are still instances where analytical instruments require being linked to desktop PC's/laptops for instrument control and data manipulation. However, mobile devices are becoming increasingly more powerful thus, enabling data manipulation on devices via cloud based technology. With desktop PC's and laptops often having a larger environment footprint than the instrumental spectrometer itself, this therefore highlights the potential for mobile spectroscopy devices. This paper reports the first development of an app (SpectralAnalyser) to enable the use of mobile devices to access and manipulate spectra and describes the different approaches and implementation issues considered during the development of apps to display spectra on Android and iOS platforms.