In the ever-evolving age of diets, eating plans and calorie-counting, a device that could immediately tell you the make-up of a food item would be ideal. Well, it appears to exist.

The super-clever guys at Consumer Physics have developed the SCiO, which is a pocket-sized molecular-sensor, and while that sounds like something out of Star Trek, it very-much is an actual thing.

By placing the sensor near an object and pressing the button for two seconds, SCiO can immediately analyze the object’s chemical makeup and send the information via cloud to the user’s smartphone, which then shows the desired information on the screen.

The device is still only a prototype, but the team at Consumer Physics are looking for some crowd-funding via Kickstarter – $200,000 (around R2,140,000) to be exact – in order to get SCiO on the market. If you contribute $199 (around R2,130) to their cause, you’ll get your own SCiO as soon as December 2014.

[source: Mashable]