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Tag Archives: heart rate monitor

PC-based heart rate monitor using Arduino and Easy Pulse sensor

Posted on June 9, 2013 by R-B 63 comments

The heart rate, also referred to as pulse rate, has been recognized as a vital sign since the beginning of medicine, and it is directly related to a person’s cadiovascular health. Today, we are going to make a PC-based heart rate monitor system using an Arduino board and Easy Pulse V1.1 sensor. Easy Pulse is a pulse detecting sensor that uses the principle of transmission photo-plethysmography (PPG) to sense the pulse signal from a finger tip. The sensor output is read by the Arduino board, which then transfers the data to the PC through a serial interface. A PC application is developed using Processing programming language to display the received PPG signal and instantaneous heart rate.

Arduino pulse meter

Easy Pulse Sensor (Version 1.1) Overview (Part 1)

Posted on April 20, 2013 by R-B 79 comments

The Easy Pulse sensor is designed for hobby and educational applications to illustrate the principle of photoplethysmography (PPG) as a non-invasive optical technique for detecting cardio-vascular pulse wave from a fingertip. It uses an infrared light source to illuminate the finger on one side, and a photodetector placed on the other side measures the small variations in the transmitted light intensity. The variations in the photodetector signal are related to changes in blood volume inside the tissue. The signal is filtered and amplified to obtain a nice and clean PPG waveform, which is synchronous with the heart beat. The original version of Easy Pulse uses the TCRT1000 reflective optical sensor to sense the blood variation in the finger tissue and outputs a digital pulse which is synchronous with the heart beat. Today, we are pleased to announce the release of Easy Pulse Version 1.1, which has some improvements over the original design. The new version provides both analog PPG waveform as well as digital pulse signal as separate outputs. Easy Pulse Version 1.1 board is available for purchase on Tindie. Recently, our Chinese distributor Elecrow has also started selling it for $18.50, and they can ship it world-wide at lower cost.

Easy Pulse version 1.1

More Easy Pulse kits are available now

Posted on October 12, 2012 by R-B Leave a comment

All the Easy Pulse kits from the first lot were sold out pretty quickly. More kits are available now on Tindie. If you are interested to get one, you can buy it from here:

https://tindie.com/rajbex/easy-pulse-a-diy-pulse-sensor-based-on-photoplethysmography/

Easy Pulse kit

List of components in the kit

Assembled Easy Pulse board

Documentation

Assembly instructions

Heart rate measurement from fingertip

Posted on February 5, 2011 by R-B 841 comments

Introduction

Heart rate measurement indicates the soundness of the human cardiovascular system. This project demonstrates a technique to measure the heart rate by sensing the variation of the blood volume inside a finger artery, which is caused by the pumping action of the heart. It consists of an infrared LED that transmits an IR signal through the fingertip of the subject. A part of this infrared light is reflected by the blood cells. The reflected signal is detected by a photo diode sensor. The changing blood volume with heartbeat results in a train of pulses at the output of the photo diode, the magnitude of which is too small to be detected directly by a microcontroller. Therefore, a two-stage, high gain, active low pass filter is designed using two Operational Amplifiers (OpAmps) to filter and amplify the signal to appropriate voltage level so that the pulses can be counted by a microcontroller. The heart rate is displayed on a 3 digit seven segment LED display. The microcontroller used in this project is PIC16F628A.