Bactrack's wearable will tell you how drunk you are

CES 2017: And it won't get in the way
The BACtrack Skyn wearable alcohol biosensor is seen in an undated handout artist's rendering courtesy of BACtrack.
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We've all been there. You're a couple of rum and cokes into the evening and you start doing the mental arithmetic. How many units have you had? Are you safe to drive? Really, it's a bad idea to consume any amount of alcohol before you get behind the wheel, but Bactrack has come up with a solution that's more convenient than whipping out a breathalyser.

The Bactrack Skyn is a wearable alcohol tracker that will let you know how drunk you are in real time. The band takes a reading every second, while an app will display a graph detailing your exact alcohol level.

Right now the Skyn just tracks your transdermal alcohol level, which is done by monitoring the small but constant perspiration our skin gives out. However the company told us that it is going to have the device showing blood alcohol content (BAC) by the time of release.

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This is a more universally understood reading, but BAC levels also peak earlier than TAC (transdermal alcohol content). Right now Bactrack says there's about a 20 minute gap between consuming alcohol and it showing on the graph with the TAC method.

Bactrack's wearable will tell you how drunk you are

There's also a temperature reading, but this is just to make sure you know it's reading correctly - after all, you wouldn't want to get an inaccurate reading just because the sensors were failing to lock on.

The Sync will be available as a tracker that sits around your wrist, but Bactrack showed us how it could also sit on an Apple Watch strap, and potentially be built into a range of bands for other trackers and smartwatches on the market.

Bactrack's wearable will tell you how drunk you are

Bactrack also showed us a mock-up of an Apple Watch app to demonstrate how it could potentiality integrate with these wearables on a software level too.

The company is targeting a launch this summer for a price of $99. We'll certainly be taking it out on the town when we can get one in for testing.

Bactrack's wearable will tell you how drunk you are




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Hugh Langley

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Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.

Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.

Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.

He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.


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