An optical assembly is disclosed including two laterally variable bandpass optical filters stacked at a fixed distance from each other, so that the upstream filter functions as a spatial filter for the downstream filter. The lateral displacement may cause a suppression of the oblique beam when transmission passbands at impinging locations of the oblique beam onto the upstream and downstream filters do not overlap. A photodetector array may be disposed downstream of the downstream filter. The optical assembly may be coupled via a variety of optical conduits or optical fibers for spectroscopic measurements of a flowing sample.

A hand held spectrometer is used to illuminate the object and measure the one or more spectra. The spectral data of the object can be used to determine one or more attributes of the object. In many embodiments, the spectrometer is coupled to a database of spectral information that can be used to determine the attributes of the object. The spectrometer system may comprise a hand held communication device coupled to a spectrometer, in which the user can input and receive data related to the measured object with the hand held communication device. The embodiments disclosed herein allow many users to share object data with many people, in order to provide many people with actionable intelligence in response to spectral data.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds that light-emitting diodes (LEDs) should be cooled to increase efficiency, the LEDs disclosed herein are heated to increase efficiency. Heating an LED operating at low forward bias voltage can be accomplished by injecting phonons generated by non-radiative recombination back into the LED's semiconductor lattice. This raises the temperature of the LED's active rejection, resulting in thermally assisted injection of holes and carriers into the LED's active region. This phonon recycling or thermo-electric pumping process can be promoted by heating the LED with an external source (e.g., exhaust gases or waste heat from other electrical components). It can also be achieved via internal heat generation, e.g., by thermally insulating the LED's diode structure to prevent (rather than promote) heat dissipation. In other words, trapping heat generated by the LED within the LED increases LED efficiency under certain bias conditions.

A displacement sensor includes a light source unit configured to apply light with different plural wavelengths in a direction oblique to a measurement region of a planar measured object, a spectroscope configured to measure spectral distribution of light reflected by the measurement region, a feature amount extracting module configured to extract a feature amount of the spectral distribution, and a displacement calculating module configured to calculate displacement of the measurement region based on the extracted feature amount and a relation between displacement and a feature amount acquired previously.

An electronic device or entertainment gaming machine comprising: at least one betting terminal having a software program or plurality of software programs that allow at least a second player to place a bet on a jackpot if a first player declines the right to place a bet on the jackpot, wherein the second player is at a betting terminal that is apart from the conventional casino table game and the first player is playing at a conventional casino table game and is granted a right of first refusal to place a bet on jackpot by virtue of the first player's bet on the conventional casino table game, wherein the outcome of the jackpot is determined according to a combination of cards or dice in the conventional casino table game.

An optical radiation source produced from a disordered semiconductor material, such as black silicon, is provided. The optical radiation source includes a semiconductor substrate, a disordered semiconductor structure etched in the semiconductor substrate and a heating element disposed proximal to the disordered semiconductor structure and configured to heat the disordered semiconductor structure to a temperature at which the disordered semiconductor structure emits thermal infrared radiation.

A hyperspectral camera includes light mixing chambers projected onto an imaging sensor. The projection of each chamber is slightly larger than a sensor pixel. The chambers are placed as a linear array in a slit plane or as a two dimensional matrix in front of the imaging sensor. The mixed light from each chamber is depicted by several sensor pixels. The sensor outputs information used to form an overdetermined equation set. The set is solved and optimized for the solution giving the lowest overall error or the best fit. The solution of the equation set combined with the optimization is the intensity values of the chambers constituting imaginary pixels being calculated. These imaginary pixels form the output of an improved hyperspectral camera system, which has significantly lower optical errors like keystone and point spread function variation for different wavelengths.

Apparatus and methods for spectral analysis of a sample are described, for example for carrying out Raman or other optical or spectroscopic analysis of samples such as pharmaceutical dosage forms, including oral solid dosage forms such as tablets or capsules. Such apparatus may comprise delivery optics arranged to direct probe light to a delivery region of the sample, collection optics arranged to collect probe light scattered from a collection region of the sample, and a spectrometer having an entrance port, the spectrometer being arranged to receive the collected probe light from the collection optics at the entrance port of the spectrometer, and to detect spectral features in the received probe light. In particular, the collection optics may comprise Koehler integration optics arranged to process the collected probe light such that the collected light from each point of the collection region is distributed across the entrance port of the spectrometer.

A compact, portable Raman spectrometer makes fast, sensitive standoff measurements at little to no risk of eye injury or igniting the materials being probed. This spectrometer uses differential Raman spectroscopy and ambient light measurements to measure point-and-shoot Raman signatures of dark or highly fluorescent materials at distances of 1 cm to 10 m or more. It scans the Raman pump beam(s) across the sample to reduce the risk of unduly heating or igniting the sample. Beam scanning also transforms the spectrometer into an instrument with a lower effective safety classification, reducing the risk of eye injury. The spectrometer's long standoff range automatic focusing make it easier to identify chemicals through clear and translucent obstacles, such as flow tubes, windows, and containers. And the spectrometer's components are light and small enough to be packaged in a handheld housing or housing suitable for a small robot to carry.

A compact, portable Raman spectrometer makes fast, sensitive standoff measurements at little to no risk of eye injury or igniting the materials being probed. This spectrometer uses differential Raman spectroscopy and ambient light measurements to measure point-and-shoot Raman signatures of dark or highly fluorescent materials at distances of 1 cm to 10 m or more. It scans the Raman pump beam(s) across the sample to reduce the risk of unduly heating or igniting the sample. Beam scanning also transforms the spectrometer into an instrument with a lower effective safety classification, reducing the risk of eye injury. The spectrometer's long standoff range automatic focusing make it easier to identify chemicals through clear and translucent obstacles, such as flow tubes, windows, and containers. And the spectrometer's components are light and small enough to be packaged in a handheld housing or housing suitable for a small robot to carry.