We’re no stranger to the concept of a mobile breathalyzer. In fact, we’ve reported about them before. But now it seems like they’re becoming a bit of a trend. Today, we received a press release about a new device, Floome, which aims to up the ante in both design and functionality.
Sporting a sleek Italian design, with a variety of color options, the device was created by 2045Tech, a start-up company based in both Venice, Italy and Silicon Valley. According to the company’s CEO, Fabio Penzo, the biggest problem with competitor breathalyzers currently on the market is, “The cheap ones aren’t accurate and the accurate ones are very expensive and extremely ugly.”
Welcome to the happy medium.
Floome is both affordable – it will retail for about $80 when it comes to the market this fall – and slick, with a shiny plastic surface and no hard edges. Though one edge it does have is the fuel sensors it uses to determine a person’s blood alcohol level (BAC), something that is used in professional law enforcement breathalyzers and missing from other portables devices.
What’s even better is that it requires no charging. When you want to use it, just plug it into your phone’s headphone jack and you’re good to go. It functions via an accompanying app that’s available for Android, iOS, and Windows devices. With the app, you can perform a variety of tasks, besides just your BAC:
- How long it will take to recover: Simply enter your gender, height, and weight, and the app can give an approximate time that it will take before you’re in a safe enough condition to get behind the wheel again.
- Reminders to take another test: Once you determine how long it should take to recover, you can (and should) set a reminder for a follow-up test. Because of course, the recovery time is just an estimate, it’s best to err on the side of caution.
- Removable mouthpiece: This is great for sanitation purposes. Test yourself; give it a quick wash; and let your friends have a go.
- Help you contact a cab: Don’t want to wait around till the booze wears off? The app can pull up a list of local taxi companies.
- Social connections: After taking your test, you can easily share results/graphs of previous tests on various social networks. We can imagine this becoming a frat brother’s bragging rights primarily. (“Duude, I was so wasted last night! Check it out, brah!”)
Though the device has been produced, to help meet its first-run production costs, it has launched an IndieGoGo campaign to attempt to raise $135,000. The campaign runs through June 8.
