ECG Project With All The Messy Safety Details

May 3, 2021 by Orlando Hoilett 11 Comments

We’ve seen a number of heart rate monitoring projects on Hackaday, but [Peter’s] electrocardiography (ECG) Instructable really caught out attention.

If you’ve followed Hackaday for any period of time, you’re probably already somewhat familiar with the hardware needed to record the ECG. First, you need a high input impedance instrumentation amplifier to pick up the millivolt signal from electrical leads carefully placed on the willing subject’s body. To accomplish this, he used an AD8232 single-lead ECG module (we’ve actually seen this part used to make a soundcard-based ECG). This chip has a built-in instrumentation amplifier as well as an optional secondary amplifier for additional gain and low-pass filtering. The ECG signal is riddled with noise from mains that can be partially attenuated with a simple low-pass filter. Then, [Peter] uses an Arduino Nano to sample the output of the AD8232, implement a digital notch filter for added mains noise reduction, and display the output on a 2.8″ TFT display.

Other than the circuit itself, two things about his project really caught our attention. [Peter] walks the reader through all the different safety considerations for a commercial ECG device and applies these principles to his simple DIY setup to ensure his own safety. As [Peter] put it, professional medical electronics should follow IEC 60601. It’s a pretty bulky document, but the main tenets quoted from [Peter’s] write-up are:

limiting how much current can pass through the patient
how much current can I pass through the patient?
what electrical isolation is required?
what happens if a “component” fails?
how much electromagnetic interference can I produce?
what about a defibrillator?

[Peter] mentions that his circuit itself does not fully conform to the standard (though he makes some honest attempts), but lays out a crude plan for doing so. These include using high-valued input resistors for the connections to the electrodes and also adding a few protection diodes to the electrode inputs so that the device can withstand a defibrillator. And of course, two simple strategies you always want to follow are using battery power and placing the device in a properly shielded enclosure.

[Peter] also does a great job breaking down the electrophysiology of the heart and relates it to terms maybe a bit more familiar to non-medical professionals. Understanding the human heart might be a little less intimidating if we relate the heart to a simple voltage source like a battery or maybe even a function generator. You can imagine the ions in our cells as charger carriers that generate electrical potential energy and nerve fibers as electrical wires along which electrical pulses travel through the body.

Honestly, [Peter] has a wealth of information and tools presented in his project that are sure to help you in your next build. You might also find his ECG simulator code really handy and his low-memory display driver code helpful as well. Cool project, [Peter]!

Measuring ECG is something that is near and dear to my heart (sorry, couldn’t resist). Two of my own projects that were featured on Hackaday before I became a writer here include a biomedical sensor suite in Arduino shield form factor, and a simple ECG built around an AD623 instrumentation amplifier.

Wireless Wearable Watches Your Vital Signs

March 13, 2017 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

Is it [Dr. McCoy]’s long-awaited sickbay biobed, with wireless sensing and display of vital signs? Not quite, but this wearable patient monitor comes pretty close. And from the look of it, [Arthur]’s system might even monitor a few more parameters than [Bones]’ bleeping bed from the original series.

Starting with an automatic blood pressure cuff that [Arthur] had previously reversed engineered, he started adding sensors. Pulse, ECG, respiration rate, galvanic skin response, and body temperature are all measured from one compact, wrist-wearable device. It’s not entirely wireless – the fingertip pulse oximetry dongle and chest electrodes still need to be wired back to the central unit – but the sensors all talk to a Teensy 3.2 which then communicates to an Android app over Bluetooth, so there’s no need to be tethered to the display. And speaking of electrodes, we’re intrigued by the ADS1292 chip [Arthur] uses, which not only senses the heart’s electrical signals but also detects respirations by the change in impedance as the chest wall expands and contracts. Of course there’s also pneumography via radar that could be rolled into this sensor suite.

It’s all pretty cool, and we can easily see a modified version of this app displayed on a large tablet or monitor being both an accurate prop reconstruction and a useful medical device.

Continue reading “Wireless Wearable Watches Your Vital Signs” →

Simple ECG Proves You Aren’t Heartless After All

November 7, 2016 by Al Williams 13 Comments

We don’t think of the human body as a piece of electronics, but a surprising amount of our bodies work on electricity. The heart is certainly one of these. When you think about it, it is pretty amazing. A pump the size of your fist that has an expected service life of nearly 100 years.

All that electrical activity is something you can monitor and–if you know what to look for–irregular patterns can tell you if everything is OK in there. [Ohoilett] is a graduate student in the biomedical field and he shares some simple circuits for reading electrocardiogram (ECG) data. You can see a video fo the results, below.

Continue reading “Simple ECG Proves You Aren’t Heartless After All” →

Saving Lives With Open-Source Electrocardiography

April 29, 2016 by Elliot Williams 17 Comments

A few months ago, MobilECG wowed us with a formidable electrocardiograph (ECG, also EKG) machine in the format of a business card, complete with an OLED display. We’ve seen business card hacks before, but that was the coolest. But that’s peanuts compared with the serious project that it supports: making an open-source ECG machine that can actually save lives by being affordable enough to be where it’s needed, when it’s needed.

The project, MobilECG, is an open-source, wearable device that supports all of the major ECG modes. In their talk, [Péter Isza] and [Róbert Csordás] taught us a lot about what that exactly entails and how the heart works. We learned a lot, and we’ll share some of that with you after the break.

Continue reading “Saving Lives With Open-Source Electrocardiography” →

An Open Hardware Platform For ECG, EEG And Other Measurements

August 13, 2014 by Mathieu Stephan 19 Comments

[Eric] tipped us about the OpenHarwareExG project which goal is to build a device that allows the creation of electrophysiological signal processing applications. By the latter they mean electrocardiography (ECG, activity of the heart), electroencephalography (EEG, signals on the scalp), electromyography (EMG, skeletal muscles activity), electronystagmography and electrooculography (ENG & EOG, eye movements) monitoring projects. As you can guess these signals are particularly hard to measure due to their small amplitude and therefore susceptibility to electrical noise.

The ADS1299 8-channel 24-bit analog front end used in this platform is actually electrically isolated from the rest of the circuit so the USB connection wouldn’t perturb measurements. An Arduino-compatible ATSAM3X microcontroller is used and all the board is “DIY compatible” as all parts can be sourced in small quantities and soldered by hand. Even the case is open source, being laser cut from acrylic.

Head to the project’s website to download all the source files and see a quick video of the system in action.

Interested in measuring the body’s potential? Check out an ECG that’s nice enough to let you know you have died, or this Android based wireless setup.