14 DAY TRIAL // The average person should consume about two liters of water per day in order to stay healthy, but many people don't do this, because they forget. Many a person becomes distracted during work hours, and they may only remember to drink something when their throat dries up, which is already a bad sign.
To help people get more water into their bodies, in line with medic recommendations, a Finnish company called Caktus has introduced The Hug.
No, it's not a hug. Sure, those things can be a great thing to get, since they will improve your emotional health, if not your physical one.
Nevertheless, The Hug is something else here, specifically a wearable electronic gadget that is not, in fact, a wearable gadget. Not wearable by humans anyway.
Well, you probably could tie the band around your wrist or something, but it would not do its intended job, which is to measure water consumption.
Instead, The Hug is meant to be worn by water bottles. It is a sensor band that will measure how much water is drunk and how often, sending you alerts when it's about time you took another swig.
A pretty useful item, knowing how much effect dehydration can have on mental and physical performance.
A mobile app will have to be installed on your phone for this to work, but that's normal for pretty much every wireless device nowadays.
In addition to tracking the water consumption, The Hug can measure your exercise by connecting to FitBit and RunKeeper apps, adjusting alerts accordingly. In layman terms, this means that if you have a fitness tracker with an active app on your phone, The Hug app will sync with it and prompt the water bottle band to send notifications more often.
The Hug is not available for order, exactly. However, it has been posted on Kickstarter, where the people behind Caktus hope to gather enough money via crowd-funding to actually reach retail stage.
The first eighty, cheapest offers of $59 / €59 have all been claimed, but there are still a few $65 / €65 orders left, or there were at the time of this article's writing. After that, you'll need to fork up $128 / €128.
We're not quite sure why this band studded with motion sensors is called The Hug, but it's an interesting invention nonetheless, if not a new one altogether. It is made of a silicone band and plastic spring, with a plastic electronic housing that can be detached and recharged via USB. Charcoal Black and White color options are available. Hopefully there will be an Android app soon, since only an iOS app appears to exist for now.
