Wearable wireless sensors to detect movement and heart rate

Hi!

I would really appreciate some help with this project;

I need to discover how to use sensors that can be attached to the body in someway (like a wrist band or a patch) and that pick up a pulse and detect movement. I want to use this data to dictate the sounds that are created by a program on the computer. The data would be wirelessly communicated to the computer and translated into beats and melody - I guess using midi.
As the participants' pulse rate and or movement increased, the melody and tempo would become more energised and upbeat.

Can this be done using the Arduino hardware?

Thanks!

Do you NEED wireless sensors on the person. The easiest thing to do would be have an arduino with an XBee on it sending the data to the computer. Wireless sensors by themselves would get costly cause you'd need to give them each a way to send information. Cheaper to keep wireless modules to a minimum in my current experience.

As far as sensors for movement and heartrate, movement would be some form of accelerometer, they're pretty cheap, though your gonna need a bit of math if your planning on actually tracking the position of someones arm. As for pulse, Actually I don't know a good way of doing that.

Nikarus:
As for pulse, Actually I don't know a good way of doing that.

I have seen examples for heart rate monitors that use an IR phototransistor and an IR LED. Shine the LED through your finger, and the phototransistor will pick it up. The resistance of the IR phototransistor will vary as the blood pulses through the finger. http://www.arduinoevilgenius.com/projects Project 12 demonstrates that. But the effectiveness of this technique, I don't know.

As for the heart rate monitor there is a wireless solution, although not a cheap one:

You still need a Polar sensor but I think they sell it as an accessory for their heart monitor wrist watches.

As for the movements I think you have to define what a movement is in this case. Moving the whole body, just fingers, an arm or a leg?

For heart rate you could buy or build one of these: http://pulsesensor.com/
I'm not sure what you mean by movement but you will probably end up needing accelerometers and depending on how many you need and how responsive they need to be you may run into performance problems if you're using an Arduino.
Tell us a bit more about the movement part.

Thank you everybody - this is a great help. Movement wise - really, I want it to simply be able to pick up movement with more vigour. I guess the placement of the sensor would be most appropriately sited in the ankle. Wireless is unfortunately a necessity.

Can it be integrated into clothes? A Lilypad with an acceleration sensor and a wireless transmitter might do the job. What are your requirements of the measurement duration (battery capacity might be a problem with standard wireless protocols).

I would want it to last five hours aprox before needing to change the battery. I guess I could incorporate it into clothing - a sweat band on the wrist perhaps. I have just looked at the pulse sensor as suggested in one of the above posts - I think I am going to start there.

Thanks again! I will keep you posted.

Vektoria