Interactive Heart Rate Monitor
Project Statement of Purpose: A person’s heart rate reacts to different stimuli in different ways, either increasing or decreasing depending on the intensity of the stimuli. The Interactive Heart Rate Monitor aims to stimulate an interaction between the user and various images and videos by measuring their heart rate in response to seeing the various graphics. We hope the user will walk away from the experience with a pondering mind after learning what makes them tick and what relaxes them.
Project Plan: We will build a monitor that will measure a person’s heart rate by shining an LED light onto someone’s skin and when it hits the blood it will reflect back the light which will be picked up by an infrared sensor. This is the basis for how we will measure heart rate. Then, the sensor will send the information to Arduino which will send it to Processing. We plan on writing a program that would display the heart rate in a frequency graph on the computer monitor as it measures the heart rate. The heart rate sensor will be placed on either the person’s finger or arms. We will also build a contraption that will tightly clutch the finger or arm so the reading is more accurate. While the heart rate monitor is connected to the user, we will run a separate program that will play a series or images and/or videos that range from completely frightening situations to calming videos of playful cats.
Since I am working with a partner (Danial Zamiri), we will be working on different parts of the project. He will build the circuits and assemble any hardware required. The hardware would include: the heart rate monitor circuit, the contraption to connect the sensor to the user, and anything else that comes up during the project-making process. I will be writing the programs: a program to convert the data from the infrared sensor into heart rate, display the heart rate on the computer monitor, another program to slideshow the images/videos (possibly randomizing the order and images/videos shown so no two users will have the same experience). We will both share the task of finding images/videos. We plan on meeting up several times in a week at the lab to work on our project. We hope to complete all the above steps within a week so we can trouble shoot and solve any unforeseen problems in the week leading up to the user testing session.
Context and Significance: We are recreating something that already exists for a different application. We made a game for our last project so we wanted to do something different for the final project. During the idea-brainstorming and researching phase, we made games strictly off-limits. This gave us a new outlook on interaction and what to look for. We found many different forms for interactive projects that doesn’t necessarily have a practical application. And that is what this project is: not practical, purely for experimental purposes. Our project is like one of those interactive exhibits of otherwise purely visual museums where a person can interact with this exhibit and get something other than a “look” out of it. Our project is intended for anyone interested in finding out something they didn’t know could scare them or relax them. This is a project for people to satisfy their curiosity on a topic they don’t usually think about on a day-to-day basis. There are many applications of a heart rate monitor, after the successful completion of this project, it could be used to explore some of the other applications like a lie-detector or used in combination with a BMI calculator to inform the user on their health. The possibilities are endless.