Embrace Caktus Sensor ensures that you are drinking enough water

Summer's almost over, but it is also important to stay hydrated. According to the CDC 43 percent of Americans drink at least four glasses of water a day, and while the actual amount you should drink varies from person to person, four glasses probably are not cut.

That's where Caktus a Finnish startup neat hardware presented on the second day of demonstration TechLaunch New Jersey, comes into play. His mission? To fix that shortage of drinking with an application and a curious sensor that straps on your water bottle.

The sensor (called, adorably enough, the embrace) is a gizmo lined foam that wraps around a bottle of water and silently tracks your movement. Not just a tiny koozie though - the embrace silently watching the movements of the bottle so you can provide your users with a rough idea of ​​the amount of liquid that have embedded so far. Think of it as a giant Jawbone Up that straps on your water container and you're on the right track.

As always, however, the hardware is only part of the equation. A companion app (iOS only for now) uses an algorithm to suss out which of these movements to the user to actually lift the bottle to drink and which are just noise caused by random motions. The application also tracks the ambient temperature and maintains control over what type of exercise you're doing (I still have to drill it yourself) so you can update your hydration goal in real time.

To listen Panu Keski-founder Pukkila tell the Hug (and the rest of Caktus) was born out of necessity. An extreme avid athlete, he got used to his girlfriend reminding you to drink more water while he was out carving up the slopes of the Alps. When he moved to New York, however, useful feedback mechanism disappeared and Keski-Pukkila set out to create something that could fill that vacuum hydro-focusing in particular.

And you know what? As downright eccentric as the whole thing sounds, the combo of the Embrace sensor and application really worked very well. In a brief demonstration, the sensor was able to pinpoint that approximately two ounces of water expelled from the bottle, and the partner application updates almost immediately. With a hug, you're not quantify yourself as much as you quantified the material that goes into your body. That said, the team is taking a proactive approach when it comes to all those gadgets fitness tracking floating around. They have already managed to bake in support for Fitbit users will not have to punch in the number of glasses of water you have taken down in a day.

For now the device remains strictly in its prototype stage, but the team is working with enthusiasm to get the hug, partner applications and an API-dev friendly ready to
prime
time early next year. So far they have enclosed $ 25k in seed funding TechLaunch throttle, and plan to launch a crowdfunding campaign in early 2014 to enclose the money needed to start mass producing these things.