If you’ve hiked, biked, climbed, ran, raced with a Hydration System you know the question well: As you go along and sip and sweat your water away, you wonder how much liquid is left in my pack?

Recently we’ve been approached by Bernadet Schmid and David Hochfilzer, German students in Automotive and Aeronautical Engineering, working on a technical solution to provide a simple visual feedback indicating the level of hydration in your hydration system.

As we at SOURCE are always working on new ideas – SOURCE products provide the best possible solutions to enjoy the outdoors – we are curious to see what ideas this university-project brings forward. And we are happy to provide SOURCE Hydration Systems to the students’ project for testing and developing.

Design and Testing

The students’ first sketch below of the planned device shows the outlines of their solution, including a flowmeter and a LED signaling green/yellow/red the level of fluids left in the Widepac. Obviously, there is a lot of practical problems to solve, and issues like weight, durability and usability are paramount designing (not only) outdoor gear. In any case, we are curious for the outcome of the project and we will update here in our blog with pictures of the final device.

Update: Successful Hike To Summit

David and Bernadet recently sent us pictures and reported success after a 9 hour ski-hiking tour on a 11,500ft/3,500m summit in Austria: “The flow meter worked perfectly. It was really helpful on such a long tour to know how much water you drink and how much is left in the hydration reservoir.”

Kudos to the students in Munich for their successful project! We’ll stay in touch and our developers are happy to share experiences and ideas!

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