About
Prismcups is a smart tumbler that helps you manage your health by calculating the calories, sugar, and caffeine according to the type of beverage and the amount you drink.
Prismcups has the translucent section at the lower body where interacts with the user by different colors.
- When you need to drink water, Prismcups lights up Cyan.
- White light when recognizing drinks.
- Magenta light to warn you when your health is concerned.
Prismcups distinguishes the types of drinks the user drinks. From caffè Americano to Lattè, Coke, Orange Juice and much more drinks can be distinguished.
Prismcups records the nutrients (eg. sugar, caffeine) and calories you drink for a day. When you sign up, you will enter your personal body information (height, weight, etc.) then the application would recommend the amount of nutrition you need to consume throughout the day.
You can search the drinks, and even define drinks made from your own recipe.It intuitively tells you what you drink for a month, and provides you with a detailed nutrition label for your drink.
The beverage unique ID collected by the tumbler is sent to the server. It calculates the amount of nutrients you have consumed from the pre-defined beverage’s nutrition information. Then show it in the App.
We have looked into how our body differentiates different drinks.
The way we identify drinks in a cup is determined by visual information. Based on this principle, we developed a technology to distinguish beverages. RGB color codes are much more accurate than the visual acuity of human body; thus, the type of beverage that can not be distinguished by the naked eye can be discriminated by the RGB codes
The way Prismcups distinguishes drinks is unique.
The basic process is as follows:
- When the beverage is placed in an enclosed structure, the three primary colors of red(R) , green (G), and blue (B), or the infrared of a specific wavelength, are fired for extremely short periods of time.
- By using light sensor, the r,g,b or infrared spectrum that the beverages reflects are measured.
- Measure the amount of beverage by measuring the water level with our patented infrared or other way.
- Send RGB codes and amount of drinks to your smartphone. - Determines whether there is a code that matches the RGB codes received from the RGB database of a drink that already exists in the smartphone.
* The RGB database contains the RGB codes of beverages, and the calories, sugar, sodium, and caffeine data that are included in a specific reference quantity of beverage.
- If a value exists, it is determined to be the beverage. When there is no data, the smartphone receives a certain drink, inputs the ingredient, and stores it in the database.
- Record statistics on the components (sugars, calories, caffeine) consumed based on the quantity of beverages and drinks received.
Consumer prices have been made reasonably.
There are two main ways to determine drinks. Either analyzing the color of the drink as we developed or using molecular sensor to judge the material itself. However,molecular sensor are priced at between $30 and $40 per unit, resulting in excessive consumer prices of up to $200 when implemented as a product. Whereas, Prismcups uses RGB sensors to identify beverages and make them available for under $100.
And Machine Learning
The way to distinguish drinks from RGB sensors is very effective. However, when we actually developed it, the accuracy was high only when it was guaranteed a definite condition. For example, if the RGB codes are changed by an external light, the drink could not be properly identified. Our team overcame this problem with machine learning. We used the K-Means clustering algorithm to study the range of RGB codes of beverages. This way, we were able to increase the accuracy a lot.
The Example of Machine Learning
Here is a data set tested 379 times and 5 kinds of beverages by using Prismcups.
- Defined each beverage have numbers.
- The beverages are water(23), coffee(36), orange juice(38), coconut juice(45), and Monster(46).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UY3qzpmNA8PaTtP4YyL_p2KhEbnoNLYDzS_y3FyaTMg/edit?usp=sharing
As you can see below images, each color is gathered at some points meaning that we can distinguish beverages by this data.
- Water = Dark Blue, Coffee = Sky Blue, Orange = Green, Coconut = Yellow, Monster = Red
- No. 60 Coconut juice is the best practice.
- Red and blue are a little bit scattered but we can guess what kind of beverages these are.
- There are some noise data. We guess it came from a different environment.
The way how to distinguish beverages is unique and practical. The accuracy was very high which is about 95% in a definite condition. However, if the conditions are changed, the result would be very different. That is why we need to study more about it. Hopefully, it will work.
The Experiments with RGB Sensor
These videos show us
- the difference between human's eye and the detected color from RGB sensor.
- the communication between Prismcups and the app.
Bio Hackers, Dieters, People with diabetes, obesity, and etc. And give it to your loved ones.
If you are with Prismcups, You can be healthier. You can easily and conveniently record your drinking beverages. You can be a hipster by using a cool smart cup.
In conjunction with Amazon Echo, you can easily find information about your drinks. You can also in conjunction with iPhone Healthkit, Google Fitness and etc.
8Cups Inc. is a company that makes smart cup and its technology. It is our vision to help water and beverage consumption healthier. In fact, eightcups, a product that helps users drink more often, has been launched worldwide in March 2016. We would like to make you healthier with Prismcups. Why don’t you learn more our team?
Our team has experience with a first-generation product called eightcups. Eightcups is a smart water bottle that gives you the habit of drinking water. (http://8cups.me) It is a team that has already done all the experience on hardware products from planning, design, prototyping, circuit development, product development, mass production, sales, after sales service.
Through our previous product, we helped to improve the health of our customers. With eightcups, customers were able to drink up to 209% more water. How much greater innovation would our 2nd generation product, Prismcups, make?
In addition, our products have been sold out several times in G-Market and Auction (e-Bay Korea).
We won two competitions held by Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest electronics company. We’ve got grants over 100K USD.
Homepage : http://8cups.me
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/8Cupsme
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/_8cups/
Risks and challenges
1. In order to accurately distinguish beverages, it is necessary to precisely control the external environment. Even though Prismcups learns the color range of the beverage, we will try to improve the accuracy by creating a lid that does not allow any light to go into the tumbler. If these attempts do not make a big difference, we might 'limit' the range of beverage distinctions. For example, it is a form that only distinguishes two or three different kinds of coffee and water.
2. Also, the beverage database we have in the beginning is bound to be limited. There are tens of thousand beverage all around the world, users will have to define a variety of drinks voluntarily. Our team would like to mark his/her name in the app for those who have defined the most accurate data.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterSupport
Funding period
- (31 days)