Maker Shed pulse sensor
The folks over at MAKE have a pulse sensor which attaches to your fingertip or earlobe and measures minute changes in light from expansion of the capillary blood vessels to sense your heartbeat.
Technical information is available here, including design files, sample code and schmetic. The device is licensed under the TAPR Open Hardware License.
This pulse sensor includes Velcro dots, an ear clip, and a 24″ cable terminated with a standard 3 wire (power, ground, data) connector. It comes in both 5V and 3.3V versions, and retails for $20 at the Maker Shed.
This entry was posted in Arduino, components, measurement, sensors and tagged Maker Shed, pulse sensor.
Comments
This looks similar to the blood oxygen sensor at seeed http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/medical-c-197.html which also works in fingertip and earlobe.
According to their old kickstarter page, a “real” oximeter requires both IR and red LEDs, while this pulsesensor.com sensor has only one LED, limiting it to pulse and relative changes in oxygen, but not absolute measurements. That might explain the higher cost of the Seeed sensor, along with how much better its clip mechanism looks.
This may be useful in the medical field if we can make this wireless. The equipment we have now is bulky and hard to use with out moving the injured person. If we can get reliable readings without having to move the body this may prevent injuries.