How to build an affordable 3 channel gold standard ECG device?

Last Updated on October 2, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org

Information about gold standard ECG devices:

Rob ter Horst could not convince us to use the Polar H10 or smartwatches for scientific studies. 3 channel ECG devices are better for this purpose. But these devices are expensive. Here the most affordable solution from which we think it is worth testing if it works.

  • OpenBCI modules sold on eBay and Aliexpress are known to have issues.
  • The known issues are packet loss and noise cycling with the WIFI shield
  • Another known issue is the connector between OpenBCI Cyton and WIFI shield which is faulty, as reported by one user in the www.openbci.com forum.
  • The cable version OpenBCI Ganglion modules sold on eBay and Aliexpress should not have these issues.
  • But OpenBCI Ganglion cannot be connected over cable to the OpenBCI GUI, cable connection is not implemented in OpenBCI GUI, but we do not need urgently OpenBCI GUI.
  • We can connect an OpenBCI Ganglion over cable to the GPIO pins of a Rasbperry Pi or an Orange Pi.
  • Then we can for instance run the HeartPy software on our single board computer.
  • Then we need to connect the corresponding GPIO pins of the SBC to the individual ECG channels of HeartPy.
  • HeartPy is the Python Heart Rate Analysis Toolkit
  • HeartPy can be used with PPG heart rate data, but also with ECG heart rate data.

correction: cable or wired version is not that easy, it is a lot of work: