Hackaday Prize Entry: A Complete Suite Of Biomedical Sensors

The human body has a lot to tell us if we only have the instruments to listen. Unfortunately, most of the diagnostic gear used by practitioners is pricey stuff that’s out of range if you just want to take a casual look under the hood. For that task, this full-featured biomedical sensor suite might come in handy.

More of an enabling platform than a complete project, [Orlando Hoilett]’s shield design incorporates a lot of the sensors we’ve seen before. The two main modalities are photoplethysmography, which uses the MAX30101 to sense changes in blood volume and oxygen saturation by differential absorption and reflection of light, and biopotential measurements using an instrumentation amplifier built around an AD8227 to provide all the “electro-whatever-grams” you could need: electrocardiogram, electromyogram, and even an electrooculogram to record eye movements. [Orlando] has even thrown on temperature and light sensors for environmental monitoring.

[Orlando] is quick to point out that this is an educational project and not a medical instrument, and that it should only ever be used completely untethered from mains — battery power and Bluetooth only, please. Want to know why? Check out the shocking truth about transformerless power supplies.

Thanks to [fustini] for the tip.

13 thoughts on “Hackaday Prize Entry: A Complete Suite Of Biomedical Sensors

  1. “A COMPLETE SUITE OF BIOMEDICAL SENSORS”. There’s nothing complete about this shield at all. Might as well create a whole slew of other complete and full-featured sensor sets for Hackaday prize entries by throwing together 3 or 4 sensors.

    1. I have created a FULL SPECTRUM digital sensor suite for the arduino, it uses 74125s for no compromise digital determination. Every time they detect a 1, they output a 1, every time they detect a 0, they output a 0, no more guesswork.

  2. Too big. Very interesting “research and development” oriented and evaluation platform fro students, but not practical in real products creation environment. Will try to order for deep evaluation and testing purposes. Will post my comments once accomplish the field test.

    1. Hi Michael, thanks for your comment. Yeah this board is definitely an evaluation platform geared towards students and novices wanting to learn more about sensors. I wanted to keep the “keep it simple stupid” approach by just adding a few basic sensing interfaces. I would like to build it up, however, with more guides showing people all the different things you can do with it. For example the EXG and the impedance circuits can be used for a whole host of biopotential measurements. Personally, I also find it interesting how so many different biomedical measurements come down to a handful of sensors.

      I also took a look at your website. I really like your ASIC design. I definitely have a ton of applications for it myself. I work in a research lab doing some sensor work and I’m also involved in a few start-ups doing the same thing. Is it commercially available at this time?

      Thanks.

  3. I think I could use this to monitor my heart rate, breathing, and possibly oxygenation during sleep. I have a CPAP but cannot stand the damn thing. I don’t understand why there are not readily available monitors that could alarm or otherwise wake a person, or at least gather data for the user. The whole area of sleep medicine seems lacking to me, and I’ve had 2 sleep studies and several doctor visits. Anyone have more insight on this? Anyone?

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