Poop and pee. Everyone does it, but no one’s comfortable talking about it. It’s a conversation not suitable for your first date (I would hope), or one to have with your colleagues, but it’s completely normal, a vital bodily function, and is a universal part of the human experience. Plus, it tells you a lot about your health.

Being aware and educated by what your body outputs is as, if not more important than what it inputs. Several variables throughout one’s day, including diet, medication, stress even, can affect when, how, and what you excrete. It may include undigested food particles, bacteria, salts, and other substances.

And because of how the enteric nervous system works, you often don’t feel pain when things are wrong in your gut.

This can be the root of many problems. If your gut is unhappy, you might notice psychological and cognitive problems such as: brain fog, anxiety, depression or other mood disorders. You most likely will also experience physical problems such as: trouble controlling your weight allergies, heart disease, kidney problems, and more.

So knowing what you excrete and digest on the daily bases is extremely important. So then one may ask, why aren’t people analyzing their bodily wastes on a daily basis? The answer is actually very simple – the process stinks. There isn’t an effective way to do so without getting one’s hands dirty, or taking a big bite of your wallet.

Our solution to this is The Swirly. The Swirly is a low powered IoT device that’s designed to attach to every existing modern toilet. The Swirly is a two piece device, with the Pod attached to the shutoff valve, tethered via a flat wire to our custom closet Flange (pipe fitting that both mounts a toilet to the floor and connects the toilet drain to a drain pipe) embedded with sensors. Choosing the shutoff valve and the flange as the locations was a very strategic decision. Any plumber will be able to install the hardware out of the box. Our first iteration of Swirly will consist of the brain embedded with a micro water turbine that recharges itself after each flush, and a BLE/Wifi chip that connects to the users mobile device. The flange will be embedded with a PH sensor, that calculates the accurate PH levels of the water waste (the calculation takes dilution into consideration to output the most accurate information).

It works in this order. Once the individual uses the toilet, they flush the toilet. Once the water waste passes through the sensor, the data is sent to the Pod. As the water fills the flush tank, the Pod’s battery is repowered. A private bluetooth notification is popped on the user’s mobile device. Once the notification is opened the individual is presented with an accurate analysis of the PH levels. The app provides recommendations to the individual on how to improve their PH levels, as well as the ability to share their data privately to their physician.