Arduino sensing galvanic skin response

Howdy,

For the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge, my hackerspace, Pumping Station: One in Chicago, built an Arduino-based biosensor array. In our latest blog post, I wrote about the sensor I worked on: galvanic skin response (GSR)

GSR graphed on SparkFun LCD shield

I thought fellow members of the Arduino group here may find our project interesting. Anyone else working on any similar projects?

Cheers,

Drew

http://twitter.com/pdp7

Former Member over 14 years ago

This is very interesting. I have a condition called A fib, where my heart rate sudenly starts jumping all over the place and recently started wondering if I could use an arduino as a portable unit to monitor my heart rate. I'll be watching your progerss with great interest. ron5329
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simon.monk over 14 years ago in reply to Former Member

There is a heart monitor project in the book '30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius'. It uses IR absorbtion. An IR sender on one side of your finger and a phototransistor on the other. The light intensity changes slightly as the blood pulses through your finger.

http://www.arduinoevilgenius.com
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fustini over 14 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hi Ron,

GSR wouldn't be a good option for sensing heart rate, but the Arduino is very well-suited to acquire and display data from sensors. In the Biosensor Array project, we used an IR reflectance module to detect heart rate. It works very similarly to what Simon describes except the IR emitter and detector are in one package. Thus it measures the amount of IR reflected back onto the detector. It think this is easier to use as you just have to press the finger tip down against it.

Here are couple options from SparkFun:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/246
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9453

Also, of interest, may be our EKG sensor from our biosensor which shows the full heart beat waveform. There are pictures of us protoyping both in this blog post:

http://www.element14.com/community/groups/pumping-station-one/blog/2011/05/02/biosensor-crunch-time

Finally, just last night, I setup a heart beat detector which interfaced the Polar OEM chip (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8660) with the Arduino. This works with the Polar chest strap (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007VB4IE/ref=wms_ohs_product_T2). I'd recommend this over the DIY sensors as it is professional engineered, easy to wear, and pretty reliable.

I plan to use the Arduino record the heart rate data along with timestamp from a Real-Time Clock to external EEPROM or SD card. The LCD shield like the SparkFun Nokia one we used in our biosensor makes a real easy display.

If you are interested in the Polar solution, check out Eric Boyd's awesome HeartSpark project:

http://www.element14.com/community/blogs/pdp7/2011/02/14/heart-spark-an-open-source-valentine-3

and Sean Montgomery's Heart-felt Appereal:

http://produceconsumerobot.com/heartfeltapparel/ (also great general info on heart rate & EKG)

Cheers,
Drew
http://twitter.com/pdp7
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