Hi, my 13 year old son was given a math project of his choice and after some brainstorming, we decided to make a heart monitor that reads your pulse, then pumps red liquid in a jar to show it physically. We ordered the needed parts form China and unfortunately they did not come in time. The project is due in 2 days. We are missing the infrared pulse sensor so I've been scouring the internet for another way.
Just now I came across a way to use a webcam to read your pulse. I will give this a try and blog my journey here so that maybe someone else can get help.
Some install troubles and further searching led me to this site: http://thearn.github.io/webcam-pulse-detector/ Here you will find a new package that automatically gets the detection program running. All you need to do first is install Python. I used 3.4.1.
The file you will download is called webcam-pulse-detector-win and I am using it on Windows 7. You must unzip it, then just click the .exe file. A terminal window should pop up as well as a webcam window. I am using a Logitech C270. I don't know if it will work on all webcams... give it a try.
The program seems to do a decent job of reading my pulse. now I must figure out how to get the readings to go to my arduino so I can do some fun things with it.
