One heartbeat signal from Polar Chest Strap displayed in Audacity with Beat Finder marking.
Four heartbeats captured from a Polar Chest Strap displayed in Audacity using Beat Finder
Recording the signal from a heart rate monitor like Polar or Pro-Form using the Polar Heart Rate Module - RMCM01 from Sparkfun proved less complex than other techniques. Here is one of the best:
diy-ecg-machine-on-the-cheap
Audacity Beat Finder converted the audio signal into a text file of with every R-R interval time, and that signal is as accurate as an EKG.
The breakthrough came from this article. The Kubios software installed efficiently on both Windows and Ubuntu.
The details and pictures will follow. Budget Biofeedback has a table at the Ann Arbor Maker Faire on June 6, 2010. See you there.
This text was sitting as a draft somewhere around the same time period. Posted as a comment.
ReplyDeleteKubios HRV needs only a text file of R-R times which are accurately delivered from exercise heart rate monitors to produce a very sophisticated printout and lots of options for displaying and editing the data. See http://kubios.uku.fi/ which happens to be out of commission at this time. Linux and Windows versions are running on my machines without issues.
There are several software packages available, here is a good bit of information with links.
The path of this solution: Signal from heart monitor, Polar or this Pro-Form bargain on Woot that seems to be very available at much lower prices.
That signal is available and can be manipulated easily when a http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8660 (RMCM01 Polar Receiver).
A simple audio recording of this signal is feed into Audacity beat finder. While there is a real lack of information available about this feature of Audacity, it functions very well and provides a text file containing the millisecond times between the beats recorded. Using a lower capacity machine proved futile, it locked up. More capable machines can handle more than 30 minutes of file without much hesitation or wait.