Glad to see I'm not alone with this cheap finger pulse detector.
Any updates on this sensor? Has anyone been able to actually use it as a halfway decent pulse detector?
What about (god forbid) estimating current heart rate from this data?
Can you use micros() to figure out the time interval between pulses? currenttime - oldtime = RRinterval? 60000(ms per minute)/RRinterval = bpm (for just that 1 pulse interval if it continued at that same pace for a minute)?
Are you guys just guessing what jump in sensor value (between current and last value) signifies a heart beat? If it's too sensitive, up the value, if it's too infrequent, lower the value? Keep changing it until you feel the light is blinking at the same rate as your heart beat?
How come you don't have to specify that the sensor is connected to an analog pin? Shouldn't it be:
"int sensorPin = A0;"
instead of just
"int sensorPin = 0;"
Is there any suggestions for other cheap pulse sensors that might work better? I have seperate IR led & detector, but I don't see what advantage that would have over this current sunfounder sensor.
Part of the fun was only spending a very little on hardware and making it work, but it looks like you can get a decent one for 25 bucks from http://pulsesensor.com/ .