INVENTOR TURNS SMARTPHONE INTO BREATHALIZER

          Ben Biron and Jonathan Ofir, Alcohoot founders.  (inc.com image)

Ben Biron is a 24-year-old Israeli army veteran who has invented a fully portable breathalyzer that plugs into your smartphone, according to the Huffington Post.
Biron calls it Alcohoot, and touts it as “the world's first smartphone breathalyzer.” The ultra-modern, space-age design of the device comes with an app that not only charts blood-alcohol levels over the course of a user-programmed time period but links users with nearby taxis and post-bar restaurants, hotels and more, too.
Biron says his motivation for his invention is to decrease drunken driving and all its associated bad consequences. Biron and his co-founder, Jonathan Ofir, first became aware of the seriousness of drunk driving in 2010 as soldiers in the Israel Defense Force. No one could avoid a sign posted prominently at the army base's entrance which warned that drunken driving was a leading cause of death among soldiers.
Later, as a student at Wingate University outside Charlotte, N.C., Biron witnessed similar behavior (drunken driving) among students. It was then that the idea for Alcohoot began to take shape. He decided to try to try to excise the fear from breathalzyers by giving a measurable and precise degree of control to "social" drinkers.
"Moderate drinkers have more fun," Biron said. "You stay out later, you get the girl and that's the whole idea," he added. "Alcohoot lets people use data to drive their drinking decisions rather than just relying on their instincts" -- or, letting the drinking do the driving, he could have added.
The device clocks in at about 25 percent of the size of an ordinary iPhone. It connects to the phone's top and only takes about 10 seconds to calculate blood alcohol levels.
Alcohoot's breathalyzer, according according to smartplanet.com, uses the exact same fuel sensors used by law enforcement breathalyzers.
And at $75, it is appreciably less costly than similar law enforcement devices. The average police breathalyzer retails for approxiamtely $800, Biron told the Huffington Post.
It must be asked: How did a 20-something college student manage to beat the highly paid researchers and engineers of federal, state and local governments at their No. 1 alcohol detection (and revenue gathering) game?
Well, according to inc.com, Biron sought out Odesk, an online marketplace for freelancers of all types, skills, and interests. He employed a digital cartoonist who developed an animated explanation of Alcohoot for $600.
Biron then shopped the cartoon to leading universities in both the US and Israel. This involved asking professors to hook him up him with engineering students who might be interested in developing a new product, essentially getting in on the ground floor.
"A smartphone breathalyzer is an easy concept to grasp, so all I needed was a visualization to get people on board," Biron told HuffPost. In fact, he paid his earliest engineers with no cash at all, but rather with equity in the company.
Still the product, but not the idea, languished at first. Investors were hard to come by until the latest prototype of Alcohoot became available and prospective investors had something tangible (not just an animated cartoon) to deal with.
To date, venture capitalists have invested around $650,000 in Alcohoot's almost assured future success.
Indeed, Alcohoot breathalyzers are already on the market (as of last October) and may be reserved on the company's site. So far, more than 500 people have bought the device since pre-selling began in late-April.
The possibilities here seem endless. The co-founders are in discussions with beer and liquor companies who want to tout their own products. Their angle is that using Alcohoot can enhance the “drinking experience,” without, or by significantly decreasing, the risk of...ahem...trouble.