Show HN: Continous Heart Rate for Android Wear and Apple Watch

[saspect]

Capturing HR once a minute is of really limited use. More than benchmarking against resting HR, the interesting thing is to look at heart rate variability, and to do that you need to scan several times per second. For that using purpose-built devices is just better. I am thinking: https://jawbone.com/store/buy/up3 or http://www.getqardio.com/qardiocore-wearable-ecg-ekg-monitor...

[photonic29]

Photoplethsymographic heart rate requires a lot of algorithmic compensation for noise and motion artifact. There are some pretty sophisticated strategies available for beat interpolation, but individual R-R intervals are tremendously more difficult to recover accurately against real-world noise. HRV measurements are also very intolerant to error in R-R interval, and even less so to dropped beats. There are certainly conceivable solutions to these problems, but no major manufacturer of PPG based consumer heart rate devices allows access at a level low enough to get R-R time series or understand R-R interval confidence. OEM module manufacturers for pulse ox devices do allow direct serial access to the PPG waveform for those interested in hacking at it.

[jhwhite]

I thought the Up3 only measured resting HR.

[brandonb]

Hey! I'm the OP. Let me know if you have any questions.

Just for fun, this was my heart rate while launching this: https://twitter.com/AppCardiogram/status/591377862441046016

[DenisM]

Is there any watch on the market that has enough battery to do real continuous HR monitoring? Last I checked, they all only measure continuously in the "sport" mode for an hour or two, and in the "regular" mode they measure HR once every 10 minutes or so.

[Navarr]

Does this report heart rate data back to Google Fit, or does it only read info from Google Fit?

[arexi]

An app like this could save a life one day, for sure. My uncle recently died from a heart attack. It's impossible to know for sure but perhaps if he'd been wearing a smart watch, it could have told him to seek help before it hit.

[davegardner]

I'm not a doctor, but based on what little research I've done in the past, a basic heart rate monitor such is this is unlikely to provide any pre-warning of a serious cardiac event.

[potomushto]

I use a fitness tracker called MIO Fuse - it's a great сontinious Heart Rate Monitor, but Mio has very painful and useless both Android and iOS app. I wish to have access to raw data or integrate it with something like Cardiogram because it's really insightful to see how your heart responds to various events.

[ianstallings]

I'm curious about the privacy aspects of it. Can anyone elaborate on where and how the data is stored?

[_asummers]

In a related question, does anyone know of any monitoring product (e.g. FitBit or whatever) that does NOT send your data to a centralized server outside of your control?

[brandonb]

We have servers that store the raw data and run the algorithms on it, and then it's also synced to Google Fit (on Android) and HealthKit (iOS).

[martingordon]

How does this work on Apple Watch? AFAIK, WatchKit doesn't give access to the heart rate sensor.

[ddmf]

Thank you so much, I had hoped that there would be something like this inbuilt with motofit/google fit but was quite disappointed when I discovered how inadequate and manual it was. I don't need to sell my android watch anymore.

[blazingswrd]

Hey Brandon, I'm doing usability research at Virginia Tech on EEG's and EKG's. I'm trying to figure out how to do continuous heart rate for Apple Watch for an app/study.

How are you getting the Heart Rate on the watch? I've looked into WatchKit and I couldn't find anything about getting the heart rate back out of the device. I was thinking about using Healthkit to try to do something similar. If there's any chance, we could talk/skype sometime, please let me know!

[brandonb]

Sure, email me at [email protected].

[bbarn]

OP - I love the concept, but the execution isn't there. I installed it on my Gear Live, and it pops up a "Heart Rate" notification, that until acknowledged leaves the heart rate sensor on. (the green light underneath). This would obliterate the battery. It needs to do it's thing, and go away, not wait for me to tell it to, or even notify me at all. I'm not sure with the API if this is possible or not, but for now, I'm sorry.. it's just not usable.

[brandonb]

Thanks for trying it. The notification actually doesn't control the sensor (green light) -- I think the timing was likely just a coincidence.

That said, we haven't had a lot of people with Gear Lives test the app yet, so it's always possible you've stumbled on some novel bug that only appears on certain hardware. Wouldn't be the first time. :)

If that behavior is reproducible, can you send a bug report to [email protected]?

[stephengillie]

Cool! How soon until you can tap into a calorie app/database (MyFitness?) and start to guesstimate the user's caloric burn rate each minute?

[brandonb]

That's a frequent feature request, so hopefully soon--the thing I'm not sure of is whether those things are even close enough to accurate to be worth it. I think "guesstimate" is a great word for it. :)

[dannyr]

Does Google Fit handle heart-rate data?

It'd be great if I can access my data there.

Nice work! I've been looking for something like this.

[brandonb]

We do indeed sync the data to Google Fit—so it both reads your activities (walking, running, biking) from Google Fit and any connected apps you have, and writes the raw heart rate measurements back to Google Fit.

[mintplant]

Great! I've been looking for something like this.

Uh, now I just need an Android Wear device...

[brandonb]

I have a Moto 360 and like it a lot!

It was recently on sale for $180, and I'm going to guess it'll be on sale again, since the Apple Watch is just starting to ship and new Android watches are expected to be announced around Google IO in late May. https://moto360.motorola.com/

Note: the heart rate monitors on these early devices aren't great! We have to do a lot of work to make sure the sensor works well and the graphs are understandable. But I think the hardware will improve rapidly in the next 6-18 months.

[j_m_b]

I've read the Apple Watch will have this feature built in.

[IBM]

You can read about it here.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666

[cllunsford]

Nice work! Quick tip on the copy: continuous has two u's.

[brandonb]

Well, that's embarrassing. I'm sure both my math and English teachers are shaking their heads right now. Fixed!

[sekasi]

I'd love to hear some thoughts on how this affects battery, especially on some battery-challenged devices such as the moto360 ?

[brandonb]

Way better than I expected—on my Moto 360, total battery consumption is usually 1-2%, and the beta testers have reported the same. In my experience, the biggest optimization you can do for Moto 360 battery life is to disable tilt-to-wake, since the most power-hungry part of the watch is the display.

[sdrothrock]

I've been using Cinch up til now; it would be great if Cardiogram sent the data to Google Fit to graph like Cinch does!

[brandonb]

It does send the data back to GFit! Warning though—the GFit graph isn't necessarily built for this resolution of data. That's part of why we built our own chart to show you the details.

[brandonb]

I think Apple Watch is the very next platform, but I've heard good things about the Microsoft Band. How have you found the heart rate sensor?