Smartphones are playing an increasing role in the sciences, owing to the ubiquitous proliferation of these devices, their relatively low cost, increasing processing power and their suitability for integrated data acquisition and processing in a ‘lab in a phone’ capacity. There is furthermore the potential to deploy these units as nodes within Internet of Things architectures, enabling massive networked data capture. Hitherto, considerable attention has been focused on imaging applications of these devices. However, within just the last few years, another possibility has emerged: to use smartphones as a means of capturing spectra, mostly by coupling various classes of fore-optics to these units with data capture achieved using the smartphone camera. These highly novel approaches have the potential to become widely adopted across a broad range of scientific e.g., biomedical, chemical and agricultural application areas. In this review, we detail the exciting recent development of smartphone spectrometer hardware, in addition to covering applications to which these units have been deployed, hitherto. The paper also points forward to the potentially highly influential impacts that such units could have on the sciences in the coming decades.

High-resolution hyperspectral imaging is becoming indispensable, enabling the precise detection of spectral variations across complex, spatially intricate targets. However, despite these significant benefits, currently available high-resolution set-ups are typically prohibitively expensive, significantly limiting their user base and accessibility. These limitations can have wider implications, limiting data collection opportunities, and therefore our knowledge, across a wide range of environments. In this article we introduce a low-cost alternative to the currently available instrumentation. This instrument provides hyperspectral datasets capable of resolving spectral variations in mm-scale targets, that cannot typically be resolved with many existing low-cost hyperspectral imaging alternatives. Instrument metrology is provided, and its efficacy is demonstrated within a mineralogy-based environmental monitoring application highlighting it as a valuable addition to the field of low-cost hyperspectral imaging.

Here, we report, for what we believe to be the first time, on the modification of a low cost sensor, designed for the smartphone camera market, to develop an ultraviolet (UV) camera system. This was achieved via adaptation of Raspberry Pi cameras, which are based on back-illuminated complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, and we demonstrated the utility of these devices for applications at wavelengths as low as 310 nm, by remotely sensing power station smokestack emissions in this spectral region. Given the very low cost of these units, ≈ USD 25, they are suitable for widespread proliferation in a variety of UV imaging applications, e.g., in atmospheric science, volcanology, forensics and surface smoothness measurements.

In contrast to the seismic and infrasonic energy released from quiescent and erupting volcanoes, which have long been known to manifest episodes of highly periodic behavior, the spectral properties of volcanic gas flux time series remain poorly constrained, due to a previous lack of high‐temporal resolution gas‐sensing techniques. Here we report on SO₂ flux measurements, performed on Mount Etna with a novel UV imaging technique of unprecedented sampling frequency (0.5 Hz), which reveal, for the first time, a rapid periodic structure in degassing from this target. These gas flux modulations have considerable temporal variability in their characteristics and involve two period bands: 40–250 and 500–1200 s. A notable correlation between gas flux fluctuations in the latter band and contemporaneous seismic root‐mean‐square values suggests that this degassing behavior may be generated by periodic bursting of rising gas bubble trains at the magma‐air interface.

We report on the development of a low-cost spectrometer, based on off-the-shelf optical components, a 3D printed housing, and a modified Raspberry Pi camera module. With a bandwidth and spectral resolution of $\approx 60\mathrm{nm}$ and 1 nm, respectively, this device was designed for ultraviolet (UV) remote sensing of atmospheric sulphur dioxide (${\mathrm{SO}}_2$), $\approx 310\mathrm{nm}$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of both a UV spectrometer and a nanometer resolution spectrometer based on smartphone sensor technology. The device performance was assessed and validated by measuring column amounts of ${\mathrm{SO}}_2$ within quartz cells with a differential optical absorption spectroscopy processing routine. This system could easily be reconfigured to cover other UV-visible-near-infrared spectral regions, as well as alternate spectral ranges and/or linewidths. Hence, our intention is also to highlight how this framework could be applied to build bespoke, low-cost, spectrometers for a range of scientific applications.

Volcanic gas emissions are intimately linked to the dynamics of magma ascent and outgassing and, on geological time scales, constitute an important source of volatiles to the Earth's atmosphere. Measurements of gas composition and flux are therefore critical to both volcano monitoring and to determining the contribution of volcanoes to global geochemical cycles. However, significant gaps remain in our global inventories of volcanic emissions, (particularly for CO₂, which requires proximal sampling of a concentrated plume) for those volcanoes where the near‐vent region is hazardous or inaccessible. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) provide a robust and effective solution to proximal sampling of dense volcanic plumes in extreme volcanic environments. Here we present gas compositional data acquired using a gas sensor payload aboard a UAS flown at Volcán Villarrica, Chile. We compare UAS‐derived gas time series to simultaneous crater rim multi‐GAS data and UV camera imagery to investigate early plume evolution. SO₂ concentrations measured in the young proximal plume exhibit periodic variations that are well correlated with the concentrations of other species. By combining molar gas ratios (CO₂/SO₂ = 1.48–1.68, H₂O/SO₂ = 67–75, and H₂O/CO₂ = 45–51) with the SO₂ flux (142 ± 17 t/day) from UV camera images, we derive CO₂ and H₂O fluxes of ~150 t/day and ~2,850 t/day, respectively. We observe good agreement between time‐averaged molar gas ratios obtained from simultaneous UAS‐ and ground‐based multi‐GAS acquisitions. However, the UAS measurements made in the young, less diluted plume reveal additional short‐term periodic structure that reflects active degassing through discrete, audible gas exhalations.