breathalyzers

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

In a move sure to make the members of MADD happy (see what I did there?), Toyota has announced that it's testing a mouthpiece-free breathalyzer to keep those with high alcohol levels off the road.

Similar to Volvo's drunk-driving tool, drivers blow into the handheld device, which analyzes their breath without them having to put the product in their mouths.

A mounted digital camera records which face goes with which reading so an inebriated driver can't try to push a false reading from a volunteer's less-boozy breath.

If the level is too high (no word yet … Read more

Police Blotter is a regular CNET News report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: A Minnesota man accused of drunk driving says he should be able to review the source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN breathalyzer used by police.

When: Minnesota Court of Appeals rules on January 13.

Outcome: Request for source code rejected.

What happened, according to court documents and other sources: If police think you're driving while intoxicated, they'll probably demand that you blow into a tube connected to a simple portable computer. Your breath flows into a chamber with an infrared light … Read more