Last Updated on January 21, 2025 by pg@petergamma.org
Swiss physiologist Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org
Is interested since around 20 years in meditation research. But which devices should meditators choose? A brain scanner?
But these devices are about 2 Mio USD. This is too much for Peters home lab. So Peter started meditating with a a Polar chest strap and a Polar watch. Then he became interested in optical heart rate monitors which are used in smartwatches. And he bought a Garmin Forerunner 235. But how accurate are these devices? Peter wanted to know this. How accurate are they compared to medical and research grade devices?
Then, Post-doctoral researcher Rob ter Horst from Austria, CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria. Rob ter horst wanted to sell Peter the Polar H10 chest strap
Polar H10 Scientific Review: Best for Heart Rate (99.6% Accurate)
With the following paper of the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports in Magglingen:
RR interval signal quality of a heart rate monitor and an ECG Holter at rest and during exercise
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-019-04142-5
Peter was confused about Rob ter Horsts review. ECG devices are bad, and the Polar H10 is the gold standard in science? Is this not hard to believe?
So Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org wrote his own review:
And after his review Peter came to the conclusion that 3 channel ECG devices are the way to go for him personally.
And no wonder, a Swiss medec company came to this conclusion 50 years before Peter. And that is SCHILLER, a Swiss-designed innovative medical technology
They have a 50 years success story and have developed 100 devices
1974 Schiller developed the MINISCOPE MS1
- at that time an ultra-small
- ultra light-weigt ECG device
- dedicated to save lives
1978 the developed a first mini spirometer
1984 a 6 channel ECG device with computer measurement
1995 Three channel ECG device at a low price
- No other ECG product of that time has been sold more often.
3 channel ECG devices are gold standard for heart rate measurements on a treadmill up to around 15 km/h. And spirometers are best to measure respiration rate.
This is the conclusion of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org. But where can we buy these devices? For instance from Schiller medical Switzerland. These devices are also available in the U.S.
Presenting Schiller CS 200 Ergospirometry Diagnostic Equipment | Dr’s Toy Store Schiller CS-200 Touch Stress System with Treadmill
$22,995.00
The CS 200 is now also available with 16 ECG channels. Essential Tips for Choosing the Right Stress Test System for Your Practice -CS 200 Excellence from SCHILLER AMERICAS
And the prices of these devices are also at the level of Swiss quality products. But if you read:
you can eventually build such devices for less money.
The following EEG devices are voted out by Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org
And are not many of the Brain Devices Cody Rall MD with Techforpsych sells on YouTube voted for the home lab of physiologists as well?
The Most Affordable Brain Devices VS the Most Expensive
And Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org thinks building such devices by ourselves at the level of Adafruit Instructions (although Adafruit does not have instructions for physiological devices) becomes more and more attractive, if we look at the instructions here for devices which are based on InfluxDB: