Spot fake Viagra with this smartphone connected gadget

Researchers at a San Jose start-up have developed a gadget that scans pills and detects whether its fake or real.

Researchers at a San Jose start-up have developed a gadget that scans pills and detects whether its fake or real. (Wikipedia)

If the Viagra pill did not do much for you last night, don't just blame yourself as the pill may itself be a fake one.

To save you from such embarrassing situations, researchers have developed a smartphone-connected gadget that scans the pill and lets you know in a jiffy if it is made of the real stuff or not. Called LinkSquare, the tiny spectrometer measures the intensity of wavelengths of light, MIT Technology Review reported.

According to its developer San Jose-based startup Stratio, the device can find out what a specific pill's reflective signature is and then compare known pills (data for which is stored in the smartphone app) to see if they match up or not.

"We're hoping people can use this to assuage some of their fears about the things they consume," Leslie Grothaus, a Stratio co-founder, was quoted as saying.

The device looks like a portable smartphone battery and connects to a smartphone via a USB cable.

A range of light from LinkSquare shines onto the pill and the way in which the light reflects back across the pill is captured by an image sensor to spot whether it is fake or not.

The company plans to bring the device to the market later this year for $199.

It also plans to test other items that can be mislabelled like "fake" food items. According to the report, there are still a number of challenges to be worked out such as building a database of medications that LinkSquare will be able to detect.