Last Updated on July 14, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
We do not know of any major scientifc break-trough to increase the accuracy of heart rate monitors in recent years in the scientific literature. Since motion artifact do not matter anyway for our own special application «meditation», we don’t urgently need motion artifact free heart rate monitors. We can live with 3 lead-ecg devices, but we cannot live with heart rate monitors which do not have validation studies to offer which are also accepted by clinical scientists.
But costs for hardware and software have tropped in recent years dramatically. One product which is worth mentioning in that respect and we think also worth testing also for clinical scientists are OpenBCI modules produced in China combined with HeartPy. We mentioned this in our journal.
This combination, if we have proof that they can compete with Biopac devices which start at 4000 USD as far as ECG accuracy is concerned, would be a major break-trough to reduce costs of research and medical grade ECG devices. And Chinese OpenBCI modules are eventually also a break-trough to reduce costs for EEG devices. But only as long as Chinese sellers to not increase the costs of these modules dramatically.
And if all multi-sensor soft- and hardware developer increase their prices and start only at 4000 USD for their entry devices, we will start soldering single components together and connect those to Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi. And if Raspberry Pi’s become short again, we can still use Orange Pi 5 or other single board computers instead.