Healthy eating might have brought you a happier, more energetic lifestyle, but have you stopped to think what effect your five daily servings of fruit and veggies are having on everyone around you? Move over, calorie counting. The Kickstarted "CH4" is a portable device designed to keep track of your personal exhaust fumes with the sole goal of helping you find the meals that make you toot the least, for the sake of everyone who spends long stretches of time with you in cramped or poorly ventilated spaces.
After you place the small CH4 clip-on sensor on the rear of your belt or inside your back pocket (warning: not an euphemism), it will start keeping a daily log of your flatulences. The sensor communicates via Bluetooth with a companion iPhone app (an Android version is in the works) that helps you log your food intake, categorized by food type, and correlates it with the number of times you’ve broken wind for the day. For the sake of user friendliness, your daily "magic number" is displayed along a handy color-coded dial.
With time, the numbers will correlate to the different food types. By then, you’ll be able to tell which foods are office-safe and which ones you should definitely avoid on a first date.
You can pledge US$120 for your very own CH4, or $500 for a "limited edition" version encased in steel. Sadly, at the time of writing, the CH4 has only managed to collect less than US$2,000 out of its original $180,000 funding goal, so the CH4 may amount to nothing more than hot air if things don't improve over the remaining 11 days the campaign has to run.
The good news is that you can still cheer yourself up by watching the crowdfunding video below.
Source: CH4 via Kickstarter
Nitrogen 64% Carbon Dioxide 14% Hydrogen 19% Methane 3.2% Oxygen 0.7%
Also many people have no methane in their farts. I wonder what the sensor actually measures?