AMS AS7000 Biosensor is Designed for Strapless Optical Heart Rate Monitors

Heart rate monitors (HRM) with chest straps are now being replaced by more comfortable strapless HRM, such as UWatch UX. These products are enabled by photoelectric sensors that sample light modulated by blood vessels, which expand and contract as blood pulses through them. One of such solutions is the recently introduced AMS AS7000 including a Cortex M0 core, and a DSP implementing algorithm to process raw photoplethysmography (PPG) readings from the sensors to convert them into digital HRM and HRV (Heart Rate Variability) values. Highlights of AS7000 Biosensor: MCU – ARM Cortex M0 with 4KB RAM, 32 KB EEPROM I/Os – 9 GPIOs, UART, SPI, I2C Analog electrical and optical Frontends Hardware sequencer Synchronous detector Integrated LEd driver with current control Optical filters Supply Voltage – 2.6 – 3.6V Temperature Range –30 to 70°C Package – 18 pins AS7000 can deliver greater accuracy when it is paired with an external […]

Axiomtek PICO842 Fanless Bay Trail Pico-ITX Motherboard Includes a SO-DIMM Socket and SATA Ports

Axiomtek PICO842 is a fanless Pico-ITX motherboard that features Intel Celeron J1900 quad core processor or Celeron N2807 dual core processor with up to 8GB DDR3L, and aimed at IoT & medical applications, automation, and embedded systems with wide temperature range requirements. Axiomtek PICO842 specifications: SoC Intel Celeron J1900 quad core processor up to 2.42 GHz OR Intel Celeron N2807 dual core processor up to 2.16 GHz System Memory – 1x DDR3L-1066/1333 SO-DIMM up to 8GB for J1900, and 4GB for N2807 Storage – 1x SATA-300, 1x mSATA Video Output – 1x 18/24-bit single/dual channel LVDS, and 1x HDMI or 1x VGA Audio – HD Codec audio (Realtek ALC662); MIC-in/Line-out Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet (Intel i211AT) USB – 4x USB 2.0 host port Serial – 2x COM ports supporting RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485. Expansion – mini PCI Express (shared with mSATA support) Power Supply – 12V DC power jack. Battery […]

Arbor HTab Android Tablet Powered by TI OMAP 4470 Targets Hospital Patients

Texas Instruments exited the consumer market a couple of years ago, to focus on higher margins industrial, automotive and healthcare markets. While you won’t find any recent consumer tablets with a Texas Instruments processor, Arbor recently launched Htab, a “bedside turn-key solution combining healthcare and patient entertainment service” powered by Texas Instruments OMAP4470 dual core Cortex A9 processor, and featuring a 10″ touchscreen display with 1280x 800 resolution. Some of Arbor HTab hardware specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 dual core Cortex A9 processor @ 1.5 GHz System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash + micro SD slot storage (Max. 32GB) Display – 10.1” LCD at 1280×800 resolution with 10-point projected capacitive multi-touch POE connectivity option reduces installation costs Micro USB for external device connectivity 2.0MP Webcam RFID Tag Support – ISO15693, ISO14443A/B, Felica, Mifare, Tag-it, ST LRI 1K and ST M24LRXX Complies with EN60601-1 & […]

2015 Open Source Hardware Summit Program Published

The Open Source Hardware Summit takes places once a year in different location each year. It was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013, in Rome, Italy last year, and this year the event will be hosted in Philadelphia in the US, and the organizers just released the program. It will be a one day event (September 19, 2015) with four “tracks” with a total of 23 sessions, and a keynote: Science and Education Open Hardware, Open Minds: The Rise of Open Hardware in Academia and K-12 Education by Ben Leduc-Mills. The Rise and Fall of an Open Source Hardware Company by Nancy Ouyang. Open Hardware in Community/Citizen Science by Peter Marchetto. DropBot: an Open-Source Platform for Lab Automation by Ryan Fobel, Christian Fobel, Michael Dryden and Aaron Wheeler. Making Open Hardware the New Standard in Science by Joshua Pearce. Open Source Robotics Foundation and the Robotics Fast […]

$55 UWatch UX Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Watch Syncs with iOS and Android Devices

Last time I checked about heart rate monitor, they required a chest strap to monitor ones heart rate, which I found cumbersome. It’s been while though, and I’ve now been informed that a low cost Bluetooth strapless heart rate monitor watch was available for $59.99 on GeekBuying. This type of product should provide a much more accurate evaluation of your daily calories burn rate than typical fitness bands based on an accelerometer and gyro sensor, but I’m not quite sure how they compare to the old models with a chest strap. Uwatch UX specifications and features: SoC – Mediatek Aster MT2501 ARM7 processor @ 108 MHz (A lower end version of MT2502 used in LinkIt One Devkit) System Memory – 32MB RAM Storage – 24MB NOR flash Heart rate monitor – Built-in photoelectric heart rate sensor Other sensors – magnetometer, 3-axis gravity and acceleration sensor Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0 and […]

Gesto is a Wearable Gesture Motion Solution for Makers (Crowdfunding)

A while ago I wrote about an open source prosthetic arm controlled by signals generated by your arm’s muscles. It used an Arduino board, a bio-feedback shield by Olimex, and inMoov Hand for the arm and hand. It worked, but lacked accuracy. Gesto is a solution based on boards powered by Atmel MCUs that looks somewhat similar, but with higher accuracy (over 100 gestures have been tested), and the project has now been launched on Crowdsupply. Two kits are available: Gesto Stella EMG circuit – ADS1294 MCU – Atmel ATmega1284p 2x EMG cables connector Through holes with GND, PWR, MOSI, MISO, CLK and SC Dimensions – 35 x 20 mm Includes 16 disposable electrodes and relevant cables Gesto Caelum EMG circuit – ADS1294 MCU – Atmel ATmega1284p Sensors – 3-axis accelerometer (MMA8652FC) Connectivity – Bluetooth (RN42-HID) 2x EMG cables connector USB – Micro USB connector Programming – ICSP connector Power […]

$35 Bluetooth Blood Pressure Monitor Works with Android and iOS

People with hypertension or other heart conditions may want to monitor their blood pressure daily, and since I was asked recently, I studied blood pressure monitors available on the market from Chinese websites. The simplest ones that simply display the results on an LCD are quite inexpensive since they cost about $15 shipped, unless you buy brands like Omron. You’d then need to enter the data in a spreadsheet or on paper after each measurements, so you’d rather have the process more streamlined, you could consider a Bluetooth version that will automatically keep measurements stored in your Android or iOS smartphone, such as the model below that sells for around $35 on Aliexpress and Ebay. Key features for this unnamed digital blood pressure monitor Display – 70 x 55mm; 3x 3 Digits lines for systolic and diastolic pressures, and heart rate; Memory/Heartbeat/Low battery indication Measurements: Oscillometric method Pressure Range- 0 […]

Sia Lab Has Designed a $34 Medical Lab Dongle for Smartphones

Technology makes live easier, and often helps bringing down the cost of services. Medical care is one of these things that can be cumbersome, for example if you need to regularly perform some medical tests at your local hospital, and that can also be expensive. That’s why I believe we’ll see more and more affordable devices, at least for diagnostic purpose such as Scanadu Scout tricorder, and there are also some open source solutions for Prosthetics,  electrocardiographs, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) equipment used to copy DNA sequences. Eventually, I even expect robots to replace most tasks currently performed by doctors. Sia Lab, a lab focusing on tissue engineering and point-of-care diagnostics, has recently published a paper entitled “A smartphone dongle for diagnosis of infectious diseases at the point of care” describing how a low cost dongle can diagnose disease like HIV or Syphilis, and targeting health professionals in developing […]

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