IEEE Spectrum February, 2013 - 23

RESOURCES_TOOlS

Bluetooth toothBrush
the beam brush uses a
wireless ConneCtion to
monitor dental hygiene

randi silberman klett (2)

Brushing your teeth is one of the few
experiences that hasn't varied much over the
decades, with the last radical innovation being
the invention of the electric toothbrush in the
1950s. So I was thrilled when the Bluetoothenabled Beam Brush (US $50) arrived, ready
for review and promising a breath of fresh air in
this most mundane of activities.
The Beam Brush would, I imagined, usher me
into a new era of connected oral care and geeky
grooming. It senses the mouth's bioelectricity
to record each "brushing event," then sends
the data to an app (iOS or Android) on a paired
smartphone so I could track my stats over time.
Toothbrushing may sound like an absurd thing
to monitor in detail, but not to the growing market of "quantified selfers" who already wear devices that count the number of steps they take,
the calories they burn, and the hours they sleep
soundly [see "How I Quantified Myself," IEEE
Spectrum, September 2012].
To get the best out of the Beam Brush, I found
I had to set my phone by the sink. The app's
2-minute timer could then urge me on; my phone
vibrated and chirped cheerfully every 30 seconds,
displaying the message "Next quadrant!" A music
function played the phone's audio files while I
brushed. It's easy to imagine that kids might take
more interest in their dental hygiene with these
encouraging and entertaining features.
Unfortunately, in my twice-daily adult encounters with the brush, I found more difficulties than
delights. The nonmotorized Beam Brush is awkward to maneuver: At 57 grams, it weighs slightly

less than a regular electric toothbrush, but its
tiny, manually operated brush head sits on a
bulky handle that has to contain an AA battery
and all the electronics. Moreover, as the Beam
Brush's lengthy instructions warn, the battery
hatch in the back isn't watertight. So I had to
hold it at an awkward angle to ensure that foam
didn't accidentally dribble down the handle and
leak in. My 2-minute brushing sessions went
from a task that could speed by in a half-asleep
state to what felt like a data-driven eternity.
The brush and its app can sync automatically if
they're near to each other; otherwise the data is
stored on the brush (for up to three weeks) until you
are ready to upload it by bringing the phone within
range and pressing the brush's one button. The
app shows your average brushing duration and,
on its calendar, which brushings you've missed.

DIGITAL DENTAL: The Beam Brush responds to
the mouth and wirelessly sends a record of your oral
hygiene habits to your smartphone.

But I couldn't get much out of the stats, because I evidently didn't treat the toothbrush with
the care it needed when I packed for a vacation.
When I unpacked hours later, the brush's LED
light was blinking angrily at me and wouldn't stop.
The instructions include a list of all the different
things the brush's flash patterns could mean, but
the difference between a "blip flash," "long flash,"
and "slow flash" were lost on me. The instructions also point users to an online page that is
supposed to provide "visual comparisons of the
LED indicator," but I got a "Page not found" error.
Taking out the battery would reboot the brush
but also wipe out all my accumulated data.
Meanwhile, it blinks on. My toothbrush is trying to tell me something, but I don't know what.
High-tech hygiene is considerably more complicated than I expected. -elizA striCklAnd

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FEB 2013

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2013