breathalyzers

We've all been there. We're out on the town, had a few drinks, and just wish Siri could tell us if we're over the legal blood alcohol limit for driving.

Of course, given her requisite levels of snark, it might be better to hear it from a voice other than Siri.

A company with offices in Italy and America is launching a product today called Floome that it hopes will bridge that dangerous gap between trying to guess if you're safe to drive and finding out later from the professional breathalyzer operated by a police officer that it turns out you weren't.… Read more

Everyone knows the dangers of drinking and driving. An unfortunate few choose to ignore them, often with tragic results. A good friend recently lost his nephew to a drunk driver. A member of my temple congregation lost his wife and children to a drunk driver. That same temple later lost its rabbi to a drunk driver. Shall I go on?

Obviously I'd rather not, which is why I fully support any technology that can help prevent such tragedies. Here's a gizmo that might: Indiegogo project Breathometer adds a breathalyzer to your smartphone.

Reminiscent of the Square credit-card reader, … Read more

Within a couple years, a single exhale may tell us more about our personal health than merely the current state of our oral hygiene -- and without relying on dogs to sniff out our problems.

The answer lies in a device called the Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer. Back in 2010, Stony Brook University researcher Perena Gouma began testing an earlier iteration in preclinical trials; for use with diabetes patients; now she has developed a sensor that might enable the detection of a range of diseases in a single exhale.

The sensor, which lives in a device about half the … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--We're always intrigued by NTT Docomo's booth at trade shows, and this year's MWC is no different.

The company demonstrated a smartphone case with an embedded sensor for hygiene purposes. Similar to the ultra high-speed charging jacket, the device snaps onto the smartphone's chassis, much like a backup battery. However, there's a sensor, microchip, and NFC module embedded in this "jacket."

The most interesting capability of this sensor jacket has to be ranking your alcohol inebriation on a scale of one to five, one being the lowest.… Read more

Without Jasmine around to keep us classy, the Crave crew spiral into an abyss of kinky robots, violating tricycles, and retro-digital alcoholism. Still, it's an entertaining descent into low standards and thinly veiled innuendo. All that, plus some iPad 2 hands-on impressions from Donald Bell.

Subscribe in iTunes SD Video | Subscribe in RSS SD Video… Read more

Remember when people used to give CPR to NES cartridges back in the day?

So does Batsly Adams (aka Andrew Reitano), a 26-year-old electrical engineer by day and an NES hacker/artist by night. He has created DrunkenNES, a cleverly titled breathalyzer video game whose results depend on how sloshed you are.

DrunkenNES runs on a PowerPak cartridge, which allows enthusiasts to run homebrew games on the ancient 8-bit Nintendo console. Batsly cobbled an alcohol sensor and an Arduino microcontroller board into a plastic NES cartridge shell, which uses an NES communications driver to feed your blood alcohol level (BAC) to the custom-made game as you exhale. Just don't be that guy who spittles everywhere.

You can get six results based on your reading: sober, getting started, buzzed, tipsy, drunk, and wasted. Afterward, the true BAC level is shown; if it's high enough, you make it onto the high-score list. The last man standing (if he's indeed still able to stand) wins. … Read more

Dong Ngo pays a visit to Crave this week and brings with him a handy little gadget that justifies his drinking on the job. Also, we let a conversation on 3D camcorders descend into porn talk (naturally), and Eric scares the bejesus out of Jasmine with a creepy, limbless robot baby...or at least the thought of one. Finally, Donald whets our appetites with some Star Wars-themed kitchen toys that are bound to make your cookies and sandwiches more tempting, if not actually more tasty.

It's summertime, July 4 is right around the corner, and America's soccer team has been doing great at the World Cup. And those are just a few excuses to drink and celebrate.

The question is, how do you know when you or your friends have drunk too much to drive? I have one answer, in a simple and compact form. It's the AlcoHawk Slim Ultra.

This is a little battery-operated breathalyzer that immediately shows the alcohol level in your bloodstream. The device has just one button and a little round LCD screen. Press the button and blow … Read more

A Minnesota man convicted of drunk driving did not have the right to inspect the programming of a police breathalyzer, a state appeals court has ruled.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals last week rejected Michael Garberg's claim that he was entitled to obtain the source code to the Intoxilyzer 5000EN.

Garberg failed to convince the court that obtaining the source code "may relate to his guilt or innocence," wrote Judge Heidi Schellhas.

After Garberg was stopped for speeding one evening in October 2008, he was given an Intoxilyzer test that reported an alcohol concentration of .24, over … Read more