Ever wished you could keep track of what you’re consuming without keeping a detailed list? Meet Vessyl, a cup that can calculate detailed information about what your drinking — and sync that information with your fitness tracker and peripheral apps. The quantified self has officially made its way into our tableware.
Vessyl is exactly what it sounds like: A 384ml vessel that analyses its contents and keeps track of them by beaming data to your phone through Bluetooth. Wanna know how much sugar is in that IPA? Or how many calories you just consumed at Blue Bottle? Vessyl will tell you — and it will keep track of your habits over time.
According to the company, Vessyl can do some incredible things using its proprietary technology, the details of which the company remains very mum on. Not only can it automatically calculate the sugar, calories, and caffeine in your morning cup of joe — it can also recognise brands. If you’re drinking a Starbucks-made latte, it knows.
Vessyl can do all that thanks to a proprietary technology that analyses the molecular content of each drink in realtime — a system developed by Mark One, a new company co-founded by inventor Justin Lee and designer Yves Behar, whose design studio Fuseproject created the cup’s distinctive sliding cover and faceted face. This little cup is packed full of sensors, too, including a motion sensor that activates Vessyl’s display when you tilt it away from you, as well as battery at the base that lets you wireless charge the cup, which has a five to seven day battery life.
Vessyl’s definitive metric is something the company has named “Pryme,” which is a basically a fancy new term for your total hydration throughout the day. Basically, it’s how much water you’ve put into your body on a given day. It shows up as a tiny colour-coded light on your cup, which again, you activate by tilting it away from you. You can also see plenty of other information on the cup’s face, including data about calories and sugar, when you tilt it up — that way, you don’t have to go to your app to see what’s going on.
Of course, there are potential pitfalls with a device like Vessyl. Take the behavioural aspect of the gadget. Since it only tracks what’s inside, you need to drink everything out of this one cup. Will you be pouring your beer into it while you sit at the bar? Probably not. And while you can enter drinks manually, you can also do that using conventional diet journals, for which there are plenty of apps.
Still, the promise of a sensor that can accurately identify granular information like this is remarkable. So, where you can you buy this mythical gadget? Nowhere, yet. The team is taking pre-orders on its website for $US99 in order to fund a first run of manufacturing, and then the price will rise to $US199. If you’re all in with this idea, order now. But tell us below — is this a product you’d use? [Wired; Vessyl]