The PissPad: Urinating and gaming rolled into one

As a student, drinking copious amounts of beer, German designer Paul Sponagel came up with the hazy idea of marrying a computer game with the inevitable consequences of taking on board too much liquid - regular trips to the bathroom.

Years after graduating Sponagel has come up with PissPad and insists his technology is entirely clear-headed.

According to Sponagel, "if you're a student, and partied a lot like we could back then as students, then you frequently have to go pee. Earlier there was already urinal sieves, they had little balls (to aim at) and I was already into technology and thought back then to have a monitor on top of it and to play something. That was the basic thought many years ago. So of course back then there were tube monitors and everything had to be done with cables and so on, this way it went out of the window very fast. Now it's brought back to life and it works."

Along with business partner Achim Kleyboecker, the Cologne-based entrepreneur has invented an interactive urinal sieve, with the user's urine acting as joystick. An accompanying display comes in two forms - wall-mounted tablet with frame or smartphone.

"You can imagine it a bit like a mouse," said Sponagel. "That means it traces the position the urine squirts out onto the measuring grid. And then the position data is simply put onto a Bluetooth-connected device. And that's it."

Both displays use the PissPad App, which contains a batch of games that people can play while urinating. The app would automatically be included in wall-mounted displays, while smartphone users would need to download it.

The app has multiplayer functions and users can select rival competitors, either in the same cubicles or anywhere in the world where competitors have the app and are standing in front of a urinal.

"The plan is that when you go to the toilet and are alone, you can type on the world map and in this moment people from all over the world, other players so to say, are visiting the toilet at the same time. You can choose and play against them. Or if you're going with another person to the toilet, because you both have to, you can play against each other. Those are the ways that people can play against each other."

Fortunately, in the circumstances, this can also be done hands-free, in Wi-Fi friendly areas, as all multi-players are selected by default.

Sponagel hopes that toilets using the device will not end up with longer queues caused by gamers taking their time to improve their technique.

"I don't know if people will have to wait because there'll be a line-up," he said. "Waiting always takes a while, as it always has. We have measured time from seven seconds to two minutes twenty seconds, which means there's a good spectrum of game time there. It doesn't change the game, that means it stays whether you play or not."

The pair wants PissPad to launch in March 2017 and have launched a crowd-sourcing fund-raising campaign. — Reuters