Before you decide to click away, thinking we’re talking about some heart rate monitor that connects to a display using WiFi, wait! Pulse-Fi is a system that monitors heart rate using the WiFi signal itself as a measuring device. No sensor, no wires, and it works on people up to ten feet away.
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz, including a visiting high school student researcher, put together a proof of concept. Apparently, your heart rate can modify WiFi channel state information. By measuring actual heart rate and the variations in the WiFi signal, the team was able to fit data to allow for accurate heart rate prediction.
The primary device used was an ESP32, although the more expensive Raspberry Pi performed the same trick using data generated in Brazil. The Pi appeared to work better, but it is also more expensive. However, that implies that different WiFi chipsets probably need unique training, which, we suppose, makes sense.
Like you, we’ve got a lot of questions about this one — including how repeatable this is in a real-world environment. But it does make you wonder what we could use WiFi permutations to detect. Or other ubiquitous RF signals like Bluetooth.
No need for a clunky wristband. If you could sense enough things like this, maybe you could come up with a wireless polygraph.
I have a mmwave sensor. Also does this but wifi is pretty cool
I do hope this never develops to the point where it can gets in the hands of retailers and marketers.
too late, they are already selling the ESP32 and the Raspberry Pi
Military already using it.
No they aren’t. Keep that nonsense to yourself…
The “hope” is that the sensors we are surrounded by constantly, are constantly on, and constantly phoning home, don’t get a software upgrade so that every marketing firm can now get real-time and historic heart-rate information on literally everyone.
No military, government, or any agency is capturing non-contact heart-rate information on literally everyone. That would be insane, and not even that useful.
But data brokers and marketing would KILL for timestamped heart-rate data if they thought they can turn it into relevant ‘impression’ data.
I’m starting to think that my next house needs to have a grounded metal wrap around it.
Better privacy and less interference
I’m making an aluminum suit… to match the aluminum hat I made earlier.
I mean there is full crack pot and seeing things like tracking people through walls with wifi or other signals that leak what you are doing at home.
Though I’d agree it’s likely too much on the paranoid side.
a former friend of mine, who sadly lost his mind and went insane, bought a house many many years ago. he bought very thin stainless steel wire mesh and put that on the walls. Then he put a layer of wallpaper on it. I know he did this because i helped him with it. The floor underneath his house, the roof, everything had the wire mesh and every wall and floor etc, was connected to each other. He had the windows removed with a high quality sun blocker version, that also limits the amount of signals coming through. His entire house was a deadzone. The moment you walk in, your phone stops working. This might have been a warning sign, but hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Sounds like Slippin’ Jimmy’s brother Chuck…
That would be a ham radio operator’s dream home…
Agreed. You’d also be able to have the cleanest wifi around.
That’s sad and I’m sorry for your friend.
I still think the idea itself isn’t the worst outside of losing cell reception (scary for house guests you don’t know well).
Though I’d agree it is probably going too far for the privacy it’d offer.
I would have dreaded buying a house like this back when we had TVs with bunny ears all around the house.
Today I would count it as a distinct bonus; I can see >20 wifi SSIDs from my neighbors which I’m sure interfere with my wifi experience. Maybe you’d lose 4g/5g reception, but the improved calling over wifi would make up for it.
You’ll find that house on Faraday Drive . . . . . .
haha and i’m sitting here cursing my aluminum siding every time i’m using weak intermittent wifi on the front porch
People living in brick houses as well.
“But it does make you wonder what we could use WiFi permutations to detect.”
Read up on 802.11bf. Wi-Fi Sensing is already being deployed and standardized, for home security, home healthcare (e.g., breathing and heart rate detection), aging-in-place, VR/XR augmentation, IoT control, etc.
USA NIH did some neat research in this field – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7961631/
Found that when I was looking for info on radar speed sensors on traffic light standards. My tiny spot on Earth even has them facing into parking lot exits were most folks are going 5-10mph. That led my thinking to “then what are those sensors doing if not measuring speed”.
Have a nice day.
Something like this would be a tool thieves could use – quickly see if someone is in a house or not.
Currently a common deterrant is to have your home automation switch on lamps in a random pattern when you are out. If thieves begin to pick up tools like the one described here, you’d need some kind of life sized dummy that looks on wifi like breathing and having a heartbeat. Or even better, have your wifi accesspoint emit a signal modulated in a way that looks like heartbeat and breathing.
WTF are you talking about?
How would a sensor held a few feet away from someone to detect a heartbeat help a thief tell if a home was unoccupied? I’m pretty sure their eyes will already tell them if there is a person standing within arms reach.
If you want to go crying about how tech hurts your ‘home security’ then at least start with the obvious low hanging fruit that has been in use for decades…
…most water meters broadcast a running total in 1 minute intervals.
Unencrypted public broadcast.
A $2 SDR will pick up every home within 500m-800m, and a $5 directional antenna will tell you which number = which house.
That isn’t just granular enough to tell if a home is occupied.
It is enough to infer he number of occupants, when they do laundry, whether they wash the dishes by hand or use a dishwasher (which uses WAY less water…), and even creepier stuff like whether you washed your hands after using the toilet.
And yes, it has been used by MANY thieves to not only confirm if a target home is unoccupied, but also to FIND homes with vacationing families for opportunistic break-ins.
Remember when Batman created a sonar using phone signals to find the Joker.