People on Kickstarter are going crazy for a smart water bottle that glows when you need to take a sip.
Spotted on TechCrunch and officially launched on Monday with 38 days left to go, the HidrateMe water bottle has already surpassed it's $35,000 funding goal and reached over $130,000 at the time of this post.
The 72 ounce bottle has a lot of really cool features. It works by syncing the water bottle to your phone through an app using Bluetooth. The app will ask your age, gender, preferred metric (ounces or millileters), height, weight, and how active you usually are.
All that data will go into the free app and it will then calculate how much water you should be drinking and work with a sensor within the water bottle itself to track how much water you've consumed.
A sensor in the water bottle syncs with your phone, the HidrateMe app, as well as other apps and wearables.
The coolest part is that the app will sync with fitness wearables and apps, so if you go for a long hike or a bike ride, your HidrateMe water bottle will adjust the amount of water you need to drink.
It also takes into account your location and can adjust your daily water goals depending on the temperature, humidity, and elevation of your surroundings.
And if you're bad about remembering to drink water, the watebottle will glow whenever you've gone long periods of time without drinking anything.
It will adjust based on your activity level as well as take into account temperature, humidity, and elevation.
The idea for HidrateMe came when CEO and cofounder Nayda Nguyen realized she wasn't drinking enough water and wanted to develop an elegant solution.
"We are tracking everything about our body right now - our exercise, our sleep, our diet," Nguyen explained in the Kickstarter video. "But there's no easy way to track the most essential thing to our body: water. It's the next piece of the puzzle."
She teamed up with four other engineers, designers, developers, and marketers from the University of Minnesota and within 54 hours, they had created the first prototype.
After that, they knew they were onto something. They quit their jobs and were selected to join the Sprint Mobile Health Accelerator sponsorship that took them to Kansas City, MO and let them work for three months developing the bottle.
"We did 80% of the work for the campaign before it even started," Nguyen told TechCrunch. "Thanks to that, we rallied a large group of influencers in the fitness world to help us spread the word and had a big sign-up list with potential backers long before our Kickstarter launch."
There's no word yet on if the app can work with multiple HidrateMe bottles or if you need to stick with just one bottle. Another issue could be if you prefer drinking water out of the bottle without the cap on since the HidrateMe sensor will stop tracking water intake if the cap is removed.
According to the team, the battery will also last a year, but after that, you'll need to replace it to keep your water bottle functioning with the app and Bluetooth.
The HidrateMe bottles will be made with BPA-free Tritan plastic and are dishwasher safe. The early bird price for the water bottle will be $39 with the regular price at $45 and it comes in five colors, including white, green, teal, pink, and black. The team is aiming for a late 2015 or early 2016 release date.