DIY Heart Rate Monitor

Now that I’m a personal telemetry nut, I went looking for a way to funnel a live stream of my heart rate into some sort of digital archive where I could add it to the data pool. The Nokia N79 Polar looked promising, but I don’t want to buy a new phone, and I don’t like the form factor.

Then today I read Impact of open source hardware on Laurent’s blog, which pointed me to Low-cost Heart Rate Monitor for XO-1, a project to hack together a heart rate monitor for the OLPC, one of which we happen to have at home.

Which got me thinking of Forskningsavdelningen (“Research Department”), Olle’s hackerspace in Malmö, and hardware hacking, something that, to be honest, never interested me very much mostly because I wasn’t interested in making tiny devices out of solder and masking tape that could make an LED light up or a buzzer beep.

But making real stuff — whether toasters or heart rate monitors or a better light switch — now that’s interesting.

Kind of hard to run on the treadmill with the XO in my hand, but maybe that’s where LilyPad Arduino comes in?

Much to ponder.

Comments

Andrew MacPherson's picture
Andrew MacPherson on April 29, 2009 - 16:32 Permalink

To combine a number of your posts over the past month. I can only stand to do personal telemetry on things like the books I read and music I listen to. These remain fun and really have little bearing on my life. Like CNN, turning these tools on parts of my personal life that truly matter becomes too terrifying and depressing.

Neo's picture
Neo on August 12, 2009 - 17:04 Permalink

I found a ton of Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Watches here. I ought the TQR 775 and have not had any problems with it.

I ws also able t find a coupon when I seached in Google which may help.
Neo