Fitting a cold, metal heart in an Altoids tin

sim

[James] has been building a heart rate monitor using a very cool TI chip. He needed a way to test his device, and commercial ECG simulators, like all biotech devices, are absurdly expensive. [James] decided to build his own heart rate simulator, and in the process made a great tool and one of the most well documented projects we've ever seen. Of course, if you're building an ECG simulator, … [Read more...]

DIY Propeller-based ECG

propeller_ecg

[Ray] likes to build all sorts of Propeller-based projects, but one of the more interesting items we came across was this DIY ECG. While we have covered other DIY electrocardiograms before, he left the breadboard behind and put together a nicely done PCB for his build. The ECGs design should be pretty familiar to anyone that has seen our ECG coverage in the past. The user places his thumbs on … [Read more...]

Wireless electrocardiography… with iPhone

wireless-ecg

This module is a sensor package for monitoring the electrical activity of the heart. It is the product of an effort to create a Wireless Body Sensor Network node that is dependable while consuming very little electricity, which means a longer battery life. To accomplish this, the microcontroller in charge of the node compresses the data (not usually done with wireless ECG hardware) so that the … [Read more...]

Lucid dreaming

Does anyone else see the paperclip he used as a jumper wire?

When we saw [merkz] use of an Arduino to produce lucid dreaming we were quite shocked. Unlike typical setups that just flash a light through sleep, his system monitors eye movement through electrodes and is able to send the data to a computer for graphing and analyzing.  The only problem being we couldn't find a circuit diagram or code. Not ones to be shot down so quickly, a Google revealed … [Read more...]

Collect and analyze ECG data

ecg

Although we've covered DIY ECGs before, [Scott Harden] sent in his version that gives an in-depth explanation of what to do with the collected data. He built a basic battery-powered op-amp-based ECG for under $1. The circuit just amplifies the signal from the chest leads and feeds it into a computer via the microphone port. He then used GoldWave to record, filter, and save the signal. From there, … [Read more...]

Make an ECG with your sound card

[Marcus] sent in his work on making ECGs. His first one was inspired by [Jason]'s. Believe it or not, you can build this thing for under $5. After getting it semi-functional, he decided to pick up a cheap one and mod it for PC input via the sound card. (There are plenty of sound card oscilloscope projects that will work for this.) Remember kids, don't go sticking electrodes on anyone unless you … [Read more...]