Introducing Easy Pulse: A DIY photoplethysmographic sensor for measuring heart rate
When I first built the Heart rate measurement through fingertip project, the infrared LED and photodiode used for finger photoplethysmography were actually from salvaged parts, and therefore, I could not provide specifications for them in the article. As a result of that it takes quite a bit of time to replicate that project with a different set of IR LED and photodiode as the values of the current limiting and biasing resistors may have to be changed for the new sensor to work properly. Today, I am going to talk about a revised version of the same project but with all the components specified this time. The new version uses the TCRT1000 reflective optical sensor for photoplethysmography. The use of TCRT100 simplifies the build process of the sensor part of the project as both the infrared light emitter diode and the detector are arranged side by side in a leaded package, thus blocking the surrounding ambient light, which could otherwise affect the sensor performance. I have also designed a printed circuit board for it, which carries both sensor and signal conditioning unit. I have named the board “Easy Pulse” and its output is a digital pulse which is synchronous with the heart beat. The output pulse can be fed to either an ADC channel or a digital input pin of a microcontroller for further processing and retrieving the heart rate in beats per minute (BPM).
Easy Pulse sensor