Nobo B60 uses light to measure how much water is in your body
Nobo is developing B60, a connected wearable that monitors hydration levels of athletes in real-time.
Essential reading: Smart gadgets that help you drink more water
Drinking water is important – we all know that. If you’re not taking in enough of the liquid, then you should seriously start looking at ways to change this. Your body needs water to properly break down food, eliminate toxic substances, stay healthy and maintain the functions of its systems.
Despite its importance, we have yet to see a wearable that tracks hydration automatically. There are a number of devices in the works but nothing that has made it into a real-world product.
There is, of course LVL. Supposedly a fitness tracker that uses red-light technology to measure your hydration levels, it comes from BSX Athletics, an Austin-based wearable sensor company. The company raised a whopping $1.2 million from 7,500 backers on Kickstarter to fund product development. With an original delivery date set for June 2017, we were anxiously anticipating the arrival of the first hydration monitoring device. We are still waiting.
The Wisconsin-based startup Nobo hopes to fill the gap in the market with the B60 – a non-invasive hydration and fluid balance monitoring device. A few years in the making, the wearable is one of five finalists in next weekend’s NFL’s 1st & Future pitch competition. This is the NFL’s annual Super Bowl competition designed to spur novel advancements in athlete safety and performance.
The other finalists in the Innovations to Advance Athlete Health and Safety Competition category are Solius, TackleBar, TendoNova, and TopSpin. You can watch a livestream of the competition on February 2nd at http://www.nfl.com/1standfuture/live.
The B60 measures hydration by illuminating certain sites of the body with near-infrared light. The light returned is measured and used to asses both the body’s total water content and other important biometrics. This can be done continuously or on-demand, all in real-time.
“We’re shining several different wavelengths of light into the body and measuring how much of that light is absorbed,” Russ Rymut, founder and CEO of Nobo told Sport Techie.
“Based on that, we can estimate how much fluid is actually in the tissues as well as compensate for other body factors—how much body fat and muscle mass and those kinds of things.”
The results can be seen on the wearable itself or through the accompanying smartphone app. The app also allows you to track changes over time, via the B60 hydration metric.
This solution sounds great for knowing if you’re hydrating correctly for your body and activity level. We do not have word on an actual release date but the plan is to begin team trials this year. Hopefully a retail launch will follow soon after.
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