Why are soft- and hardware costs for physiological sensor devices so high?

Last Updated on February 5, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

For our own little private project on our personal website, many products which we reviewed here, are expensive. And the consumer grade devices which we reviewed are not very helpful for physiologists. Hardware and software costs for physiological sensor devices are high, and seem to stay high. For other applications, for instance Home Assistant with home sensors, costs for hardware and software have dropped tremendously. For almost every sensor, instructions can be found in the web and on YouTube, how to connect these sensors to Home Assistant.

But why are the costs for hardware and software for physiological sensor devices so high? Are these made of own special components? We don t think so. But these soft- and hardware components are developed by developers with a university degree. We still suppose, that costs for software and hardware will drop for physiological sensor devices. Many skilled coders use Python, and offer open source software. BITalino has shown that the hardware cost for physiological sensor devices don t have to be very high. We have new software platforms as for instance InfluxDB. InfluxDB is a challenge for non-coders as we are.

But there are already easy examples how to learn to handle with InfluxDB, Home Assistant and Apple watches, with the Apple Health Auto Export App from Librion Sobbers and the Home Assistant/InfuxDB example from Udo Berndt. It does not matter, whether we can use Apple watches for physiology or not. These applications are good starting points to start our own personal project. If the Apple watch is not accurate enough for our purpose, we can later on replace the Apple watch by physiological sensors which fits best to our needs.

Soft- and hardware costs for physiological sensor devices will drop. No one can prevent this. What remains that we need supporters who can handle with these devices, and are experienced with those. Supporters which support these devices are people which are highly qualified. Support by these people has to be compensated. For our own little private project, we don t need urgently this support. We can eventually do without it. We think it is possible to build many of these sensor devices by ourselves. But will other scientists accept these devices, and the data they deliver?

If these scientists work at universities or at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, we can discuss these problems with those. The usually have a research grant, we don t have it. They eventually can afford g.tec medical devices and the g.tec medical support. We have to negotiate with the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, how we can solve these problems.

It is difficult to get a research grant for meditation research. We should negotiate with people which share the same interests as we have. As the Dalai Lama once said, thinking they and us, this is an outdated concept. The Dalai Lama also said:

Today’s reality, the entire humanity is one community, instead of fighting, we should develop universal love