About this project
With the PATH Band on your wrist, you use PATH Breath for about 5 minutes once a month while you take a walk or perform the activity of your choice. PATH Breath measures your oxygen and CO2 levels during each stage to predict your 24-hour metabolism to the minute.
The PATH band tracks a user’s active minutes and intelligently guides them to reach optimal fat burn with a 24-hour heart rate monitor and a pulsing LED light.
The app is designed to alert the user and give simple, achievable exercise recommendations. The app uses both metabolic and heart rate information to predict the intensity and exact minutes of exercise each user needs perform to achieve specific fitness goals. As users progress, the individualized fitness program is customized to their body (does it get anymore personal than that?)
The app works with both Android and iOS.
So how does it work?
Designed for all wrist sizes
We wanted to build one size that fits all. That's why we made the band replaceable. The band fits up to 9" wrists. However, we do have an extra band to fit up to 12" wrists.
It's not a problem if you have a large wrists, that's why we give away the 12" band for free. You may request it in the survey sent to you after you back the project
A wearable you'll want to wear
We realized that people have different preference in their styles. We wanted to create a color palette that would be neutral but at the same time have its own personality.
Ocean Grey and Midnight Blue are the two colors that caught our attention.
With the VO2max data, we confirmed what we already knew---we all burn fat differently. The duration of our fat burn during exercise highly depends on the intensity and our unique aerobic capacity.
Metabolic testing is the gold standard for fitness training and conditioning, but until now, has been reserved for elite athletes. We can measure the amount of carbon dioxide breathed out and the amount of oxygen breathed in. If we take a ratio of those 2 numbers we get what’s called RER. RER basically tells us how much carbohydrates vs. fats we’re burning. So if an RER is 0.7 for example, then you'll be burning mostly fat. If the RER is 1.0 you'll be burning mostly carbohydrates.
Not only that, but intensity during an exercise also predicts how much fat we can burn throughout the day.
The app learns over time how your exercise routine changes your metabolism and begins customizing your exercise recommendations based on how your body responds.
The gold standard metabolic cart has a flow sensor, an oxygen sensor, and a carbon dioxide sensor inside. However these sensors are expensive. An oxygen sensor that can measure breath-by-breath data costs upward of $600. A CO2 sensor that can measure breath-by-breath data costs upward of $200.
We had to build our own CO2 and flow sensors from the ground up and find an O2 sensor that could fit into a tiny device and still cost a fraction of the current solutions available.
After we built the CO2 and flow sensor, it was the oxygen sensor that took most of our time. It's definitely a hard find. We were able to find a low cost sensor that would still give us reliable outputs. The humidity in breath was one of the challenges we had to work with. So we introduced a micro heater in the breath device that help prevent condensation from humidity. With that, here are the accuracy graphs.
Our bodies burn fat not only during exercise but also after we eat and while we sleep. The challenge for developing the PATH Band was to determine, with only a few minutes of breath analysis how someone’s 24-hour metabolism works.
We collected data in respiratory chambers, 10x10ft rooms used to monitor a subject’s sleep, eating, and exercise routines for 24 hours. We collected 27 days of data in the respiratory chambers with 3 different subjects, regulating their diet with high-carbohydrate, high fat, and miscellaneous diets, periodically.
We trained our machine learning algorithms with data from the respiratory chambers. We further tested the algorithms with the VO2max data from 300 individuals.
This is what the accuracy looks like:
A shout out to all the enthusiastic students at San Francisco State University and NITIE, Mumbai, who makd this data collection possible.
Short answer: no. Once a month a calibration test is required, which will personalize the experience for you, making PATH more accurate than other devices in the market. However, you may want to use Breath more than once to improve the accuracy of the system with your metabolism.
So how does charging work?
PATH comes with a magnetic charging dock where both the Band as well as Breath can rest. The dock uses pogo pins to charge the Band as well as Breath. It takes about 15 minutes for the Band to charge and it lasts up to 24 hours on single charge. Breath lasts up to 20 mins on a single charge.
The PATH to Kickstarter
Yes. That is me, pitching and getting feedback from Steve Wozniak.
I'm Gaurav, a second time founder. Before PATH, I started and sold a social impact company back in India which revolutionized how 200,000+ families in rural areas communicated with the government regarding their day-to-day problems. Now I'd been working on PATH for 2 years with a dream to help my friends burn fat.
I started by reaching out to people who knew more than me. That's why I approached doctors who knew everything about how we burn fat. They helped us collect the data and guided us through the journey.
Then our amazing designers from Huge Design came on board. With the experience of designing wearables for Nike and Google, they wanted to create a user experience which is easy to learn and easy to use.
THIS PRODUCT IS FOR USE BY HEALTHY ADULTS AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR THE CURE, TREATMENT, PREVENTION, MITIGATION OR DIAGNOSIS OF ANY DISEASE OR CONDITION.
Risks and challenges
For the past 2 years, we've tried our best to mitigate all the risks we could possibly encounter. However, the world is full of surprises and we're prepared to take on any challenge that may possibly arise.
1. Component Sourcing: We're introducing a new product on the market and building our own sensors from the ground up. This is not a small thing. We need all our vendors to deliver all the required components at the same time for us to start the manufacturing process and run the assembly line. Our vendors are already gearing up and building their tooling/manufacturing facilities to meet our requirements on time.
2. Certifications/Regulations: As an electronics manufacturer, we need to comply with certain regulations, like the FCC and CE. Often times, these tests may take multiple design revisions. We've accounted for this in our timeline and it should not be a problem.
3. Testing: Introducing a new product means introducing a new testing environment where it needs to be tested 1000s times for regular use. We've been working very closely with our manufacturing partners to prepare the testing facility. But there are always things that you realize after you start producing the units.
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