NIT students Amol Kumar, Chandan Kumar, Manish Kumar and Nitish Kumar with their gadget in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, March 2: Keeping track of time and tabs on your puff count seems to have got easier, courtesy a group of budding techies.

Four students of National Institute of Technology (NIT), Patna, are developing a wristwatch that will remind smokers about how many times they had smoked. The swanky gadget will also play motivational speeches to kick the butt.

Christened “Quit Smoking Device”, it would play audio clips on the various ill effects of smoking whenever a cancer stick is light up. A smoke detector attached to the watch will play an audio clip whenever a person sporting it takes a puff.

NIT final year students Chandan Kumar, Manish Kumar, Amol Kumar and Nitish Kumar are developing this device, which also records statistics about the smoker’s habit. Needless to say, it acts as a wristwatch as well.

The team of four had started working on the project about a year ago. They used to work in their institute laboratory for about 4-5 hours daily. Explaining the nitty-gritty of the device, Chandan said: “Lighting up would trigger an audio clip in the watch saying ‘Don’t smoke. It will cause incurable diseases like cancer and drag you to hell’.”

Chandan added: “The same cigarette could cause the smoke detector to cause an interruption multiple times, so we implemented a one-minute timer to prevent the same cigarette from being counted as being smoked several times. The Quit Smoking Device can also keep track of the last time the user had smoked.”

The team members said the device works on the principle of the human brain. The gadget is connected with micro controllers, smoke detector, LCD and an audio output. Whenever a person smokes, the smoke detector will receive a signal through the heat, which will pass a voltage to the micro controller. From the micro controller, voltage will be transmitted to the LCD and audio output. The time of smoking will be flashed on the LCD and the audio output will play the speech.

The team members claimed the device would be completed by May this year and once they get approval from NIT, Patna, they would market the product.

Nitish said: “For manufacturing the device the initial cost we had to bear was around Rs 8,000. Once the project is complete, it will be made at a cost of Rs 500 to Rs 600, the price of an ordinary wristwatch.”