Kohler Wants to Put a Tiny Camera in Your Toilet and Analyze the Contents

Some smart litter boxes can monitor the habits and health of our pets. Having a camera in our human toilet bowls therefore seems inevitable. That’s exactly what kitchen and bathroom accessories company Kohler has done for its new health and wellness brand, Kohler Health.

The $599 Dekoda attaches to the rim like a toilet bowl cleaner, pointing an optical sensor at your excretions and secretions. It then analyzes the images for blood and examines your gut health and hydration status. Depending on the plan you choose, subscription fees range between $70 and $156 per year.

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At bathroom time, you log in via a fingerprint sensor so the device knows who is using the facilities. (Please wash your hands before logging out or tracking your progress.) Then log in with the app for the day’s analysis and trends over time.

However, wait until you quit the pot before you start harming your health. The device has a removable, rechargeable battery and uses a USB connection.

Kohler says it secures your data via the aforementioned fingerprint scanner and end-to-end encryption, and notes that the camera uses “unobtrusive optics,” looking only at the results, not your body parts.

“Dekoda’s sensors see into your toilet and nowhere else,” the company says.

Kohler warns that the technology doesn’t work very well with dark toilet colors, which makes sense. I’m sure there could be an upsell model with a light on it. Perhaps the company could add an olfactory sensor, since smell also reveals a lot about your gut health. It could track the duration of the “session” or the buildup under the rim to alert whoever has responsibility for cleaning it.

Kohler had to scramble to find suitable lifestyle photos to include in the advertising materials. Most of the images are hilarious, showing fit men and women drinking water and staring contemplatively into space – probably thinking about gasoline.