Anyone developing projects to monitor human vital signs may be interested in a new Raspberry Pi HAT designed by ProtoCentral to do just that. The Healthy Pi is currently in its third stage of development and provides an all in one vital sign monitoring system that can be easily connected to a Raspberry Pi mini PC or used as a stand-alone device.
The Healthy Pi has provided users with a fully featured vital sign monitor and can use the Pi mini PC as its computational and display platform. Transforming the small computer into a useful monitoring system that can track a number of vital signs from the human body, recording data to the SD card or cloud.
Raspberry Pi HAT
Powered by an Atmel Microchip ATSAMD21 microcontroller with an ARM Cortex M0 core, the health monitor uses the same chip as the Arduino M0 Zero, making it easily programmed using the Arduino IDE thanks to its integrated on-board USB port. Or you can bypass Arduino completely and programmed the processor directly using a JTAG programmer. The board also has a JTAG header allowing it to be programmed using Atmel Studio 7.
The affordable Healthy Pi vital sign monitoring system HAT uses many of the same analogue chips used in professional patient monitoring systems, say its creators. Who have designed the HAT to be easy to use, allow additional features to be easily added and customize to your exact needs.
“You can get as deep into the technical details of the HealthyPi as you want. Just want to use it as a data monitor? Perform the default install and you’re ready to use it right away. Are you a serious software hacker trying to make the software more efficient and the algorithms more intelligent? You can do that too.”
Real-time vital sign monitoring
When creating the Healthy Pi the monitoring system, the team did not specialize in creating it for one specific application. But kept its design flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety and is available as a complete kit with Raspberry Pi and touchscreen or as a stand-alone device that can be integrated into your existing project. Equipped with built-in wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, the Healthy Pi has been designed to support Internet of Things applications. Enabling remote monitoring thanks to its ability to process and collate data in the cloud. Equipped with a built-in MQTT client directly in the processing GUI, the Health Pi can send real-time data from a patient’s vital signs to any MQTT client/server using minimum overhead.
Graphical user interface
Supplied with open source graphical user interface (GUI) software, the Healthy Pi can also be integrated into desktop applications with the use of Java. Allowing the monitoring system to be used with Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS, Linux and, of course, the official Raspberry Pi OS if desired.
Included with the Healthy Pi v3 monitor HAT are 3 electro cables with button connectors on one end and stereo connector on the other end, a finger clip Spo2 probe with “Nellcor-compatible” DB9 connector, cable mounted digital skin temperature sensors with stainless steel contacts, a sheet of 20 single use disposable ECG electrodes and a mounting kit with headers and screws for stacking the HAT on your Raspberry Pi mini PC.
The Healthy Pi HAT can be powered in several different ways, including directly from the Raspberry Pi 40 pin expansion header 5V pin, via a portable USB battery pack or from the creators new Battery HAT featuring a Li-Ion 2000 mAH rechargeable battery. Kits are available priced at $249 and worldwide shipping is available for $18. The monitoring system is now available to purchase directly from the Crowd Supply website by following the link below.
Source: Healthy Pi open-source human body vital sign monitor
