A smart cup to know your drink
Vessyl tells you the calorific value of the beverage with a break-up of sugar, carbs, proteins and fats.
When you look at Vessyl for the first time, it looks nothing more than an ultra modern, but not extraordinary, 385ml cup. But, it becomes extraordinary the moment you pour something into it — it will identify the drink that is in it, along with the dietary content — sugar, calories, protein, fat, caffeine — and takes all the data and synchronises it in your smartphone.
It comes with an accompanying app for iOS and Android smartphones, and it transfers data through Bluetooth to record the data automatically and analyse your daily intake of beverages. As you fill and refill the cup during the day, the app calculates what you are drinking and when, and adds it to the running total. You can then see specific details on the app — the amount of caffeine, sugar, and calories consumed.
You can get the app to monitor different constituents depending on your focus, if you are trying to cut down your sugar intake, for example. These specific target monitors are called lenses, and Vessyl displays the lens of your choice in a running tally on its discreet in-built display.
The cup is smart enough to tell you if you need to drink more water by displaying a bright blue line that rises and falls according to your hydration level. This part of the technology is called Pryme, and it can be displayed either independently on the cup, or it can be displayed in the app to show you how hydrated you are and to show you for how long have you remained at hydration levels optimum for your body.
The company says that they are solving the other half of the tracking equation. The devices in the market are engineered to track activity. But Vessyl tracks your consumption in real time, for unnoticed calories are consumed through beverages. Vessyl provides you with the necessary tools to know what you are drinking, and thus make healthier choices.
The makers are quite secretive about the technology that went behind creating Vessyl, revealing only that the sensor does not come in direct contact with the liquid in the cup. It is controlled by a processor and proprietary algorithms that match the detected beverage with one of the thousands drinks tested by the team with Vessyl, including various brands of the same drink. But, the cup does not depend only on the available database of drinks to determine the nutritional content of a drink, but can also analyse concoctions made at home.
It took seven years to design and develop Vessyl. It has been designed to serve as a chic lifestyle product that is fashionable as well as functional, and it has a spill–proof lid, a non-stick interior, and comes with a charging coaster that provides enough power for the cup to work for a week with just one hour of charge time.
You can pre-order one now for $149 from www.myvessyl.com
(Ayyappa Nagubandi is an entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Possibillion Technologies)
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