SWHarden.com

The personal website of Scott W Harden

More Antenna Tinkering

Dental school is taking a lot of time away from me. I try my best to compartmentalize dental school into a chunk of my schedule (a massive chunk), trying to use the rest of the time to spend with my family (wife) and when she’s at work work on electronics (which seems to be radio these days). A few weeks ago I took the final amateur radio license exam and received my Amateur Extra license. It’s a bunch of technical questions about radio circuitry, antenna theory, and other random stuff. You can see what I mean by taking an online practice test! I applied for a new call sign (extra class operators can get shorter call signs). It seems the FCC gave me a VD. AJ4VD that is! Yes, my old call sign KJ4LDF has gone out the window as I am now AJ4VD! In Morse code, that’s .- .--- ....- ...- -..

I made my first Morse code contact from my apartment! This is the radio I’m using. It’s a Ten-Tec Century 21 HF CW transceiver which puts out ~30W. I’m using a super-cheap but surprisingly functional homebrew base-loaded vertical antenna. The main vertical element is quarter-inch copper pipe from Home Depot (a couple bucks) cut with 1’’ to spare from my 10ft ceiling. Therefore, it’s a less-than quarter-wave vertical element, requiring a tuning coil (variable inductor at the base)…

Here you can start to see the tuning coils. Briefly, I scraped a deep gash in the copper pipe such that a big glob of solder would adhere to it, and stuck a wire (yellow, coated) into that solder so it’s a good connection to the pipe. I then started wrapping the wire around a few toilet paper rolls [it’s all I could find at the time!] adding tap points (regions of exposed wire) every other turn. This functioned somewhat, but didn’t allow for fine-tuning (pun intended). I therefore scrapped the bottom half of the cardboard cylinder/coil and constructed a slightly more elegant solution…

That’s an Olvaltine container. Yeah, I know, “More chocolaty Olvaltine please!” I used a rotary tool to scrape some measured/templated gashes on each side to give the wire (picture frame hanging wire from Target, 50’ for $1.99) something to rest in. It turned out not to be enough, so I hot-glued the wire into the holes. This gives me a lot of exposed wire space to allow me to “tap” the coil wherever I want. By modifying where I clip onto the coil, I modify the length of wire in the coil that’s used, therefore modifying the inductance of the coil, allowing for some tuning capabilities. Although it has a narrow tuning range, using the current setup I’m able to get my SWR down to 1:1 on 40m (nice!).

I made a couple of contacts since I got the rig last night. First was K4KOR in central TN, who was calling CQ. I replied (slowly), and he came back to me (blazing fast Morse code). I was unable to copy ANYTHING he said (I’m not that good of an auditory decoder yet!) I’m sure he’s incredibly nice and it wasn’t intentional, but I had to give up the QSO. I know he copied my call, and I copied his, but I didn’t copy ANYTHING else he said. Does that count as my first contact? This morning I fired up the rig at 9:15 and heard W4HAY calling CQ from Northeast TN. I replied, stating that I’m new to CW so go slowly, and he was AMAZINGLY nice at sending me code at a snails pace. I was able to copy 90% of what he said, and will consider him my first solid contact!


QRSS and Life in Dental School

QRSS uses extremely simple radio transmitters at extremely low power to send an extremely slow Morse code message over an extremely large distance to extremely sensitive receivers which are extremely dependent on computers to decode. While you might be able to send a voice message across the ocean with ~100 watts of power, there are people sending messages with milliwatts! The main idea is that if you send the signals slow enough, and average the audio data (fast Fourier transformation) over a long enough time, weak signals below the noise threshold will stand out enough to be copied visually.

Without going into more detail than that, this is the kind of stuff I’ve been copying the last couple days. The image is a slow time-averaged waterfall-type FFT display of 10.140 MHz copied from a Mosley-pro 67 yagi mounted ~180 ft in the air connected to a Kenwood TS-940S transceiver. Red ticks represent 10 seconds. Therefore the frame above is ~10 minutes of audio. The trace on the image is from two different transmitters. The upper trace is from VA3STL’s QRSS quarter-watt transmitter from Canada described here and pictured below. The lower trace is from WA5DJJ’s QRSS quarter-watt transmitter in New Hampshire, described and pictured here.

I don’t know why I’m drawn to QRSS so much. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s a hobby which only a handful of people have ever participated in. It uses computers and software, but unlike software-defined radio they don’t require complicated equipment, and a QRSS transmitter or receiver can be built from simple and cheap components.

__Argo: __There’s a popular QRSS “grabber” software for Windows called Argo. It dumps out screenshots of itself every few minutes which is nice, but it doesn’t assemble them together (which is annoying). I wrote a script to assemble Argo screen captures together as a single image. It’s a script for ImageJ.

makeRectangle(13, 94, 560, 320);
run("Crop");
rename("source");
frames = nSlices();
newImage("long", "RGB White", (frames - 1) * 560, 320, 1);
for (i = 0; i < frames; i++)
{
    selectWindow("source");
    setSlice(i + 1);
    run("Select All");
    run("Cut");
    selectWindow("long");
    run("Paste");
    makeRectangle(i * 560, 0, 560, 320);
}
selectWindow("source");
close();

As far as life goes, I’m discovering that it’s not the attainment of a goal that gives me pleasure; it’s the pursuit of the goal. Perhaps that’s why I peruse hobbies which are difficult, and further challenge myself by doing things in weird, quirky ways. I’d love to experiment more with radio, but I don’t have much money to spend. Yeah, an all-band 100-watt HF/VHF/UHF rig would be nice, but I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on that kind of equipment… Maybe when I have a “real” job and stop being a student I’ll be in a better place to buy stuff like that. I built a cheap but surprisingly functional base-loaded vertical HF antenna for my apartment balcony (don’t worry neighbors, it’s taken inside after every use). It’s mainly for receive, but I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be used for QRP transmitting.

__Yes, that’s an antenna made from copper pipe, wire, and toilet paper rolls. __I wound the wire around the base and created various tap points so it serves as a variable inductor depending on where I gator-clip the radio. Not pictured are 33’ radials running inside my apartment serving as grounding. The antenna feeds into a Pixie II direct conversion receiver / QRP transmitter which dumps its output to a laptop computer. I copied some PSK-31 transmissions from Canada with this setup. It works way better than a long / random wire antenna because it dramatically boosts signal-to-noise when tuned to the proper frequency.

UPDATE: VA3STL mentioned me on his site


HF CW on the Cheap

This is a project I intend to work on over Christmas break. I’m wondering if I can make a simple HF transceiver capable of working any HF band by driving a Pixie II CW transceiver with a SI 570 digital programmable oscillator.

Here’s what my pixie II sounds like on 80m.mp3 and 40m.mp3 with a strong antenna.

Preliminary work demonstrates a functional receiver powered by a crystal. I don’t think the currently-configured digital oscillator is putting out enough power to run the circuit, but it’ll take more time to get that up and running. For now, here are some photos of what I’ve got working and real sound clips of the thing are below. I’m happy with the case I built it in (thanks Ron!), and happy with my level drilling of the holes for power, output, and the CW key!

Briefly, the device is powered by a 9V battery. It’s hooked up to an 80m dipole antenna. Output is fed into a computer sound card for amplification / PSK31 analysis.

The internals reveal that it’s a simple circuit powered by a single crystal. More crystals are tucked in the case, stuck in foam, for easy transport.

Decoding of PSK31 is happening here, using output from my circuit with the 40m crystal in it.


DIY ECG Machine On The Cheap

⚠️ Check out my newer ECG designs:

Background

You’ve probably seen somebody in a hospital hooked up to a bunch of wires used to analyze their heartbeat. The machine that visualizes heartbeat is called an electrocardiograph, or ECG. It amplifies, measures, and records the natural electrical potential created by the heart. Note that cardiac electrical signals are different than heart sounds, which are listened to with a stethoscope. The intrinsic cardiac pacemaker system is responsible for generating these electrical signals which serve to command and coordinate contraction of the four chambers at the heart at the appropriate intervals: atria (upper chambers) first, then the ventricles (lower chambers) a fraction of a second later. Analysis of these signals reveals a wealth of information about cardiac regulation, as well insights into pathological conditions.

Each heartbeat produces a little squiggle with unique properties. The squiggle is called the PQRST wave. The smooth curve in the ECG (P) is caused by the stimulation of the atria via the Sinoatrial (SA) node in the right atrium. There is a brief pause, as the electrical impulse is slowed by the Atrioventricular (AV) node and Purkinje fibers in the bundle of His. The prominent spike in the ECG (the QRS complex) is caused by this step, where the electrical impulse travels through the inter-ventricular septum and up through the outer walls of the ventricles. The sharp peak is the R component, and exact heart rate can be calculated as the inverse of the R-to-R interval (RRi).

WARNING: This page documents how I made a simple ECG machine with a minimum of parts to view the electrical activity of my own heart. Feel free to repeat my experiment, but do so at your own risk.

Project Goal

The goal of this project is to generate an extremely cheap, functional ECG machine made from common parts, most of which can be found around your house. This do-it-yourself (DIY) ECG project is different than many others on the internet in that it greatly simplifies the circuitry by eliminating noise reduction components, accomplishing this via software-based data post-processing. Additionally, this writeup is intended for those without any computer, electrical, or biomedical experience, and should be far less convoluted than the suspiciously-cryptic write-ups currently available online. In short, I want to give everybody the power to visualize and analyze their own heartbeat!

My ECG:

Videos

ECG Introduction

Recording my ECG

Video 3/3: Analyzing my ECG

ECG Theory

Measurement: The electrical signals which command cardiac musculature can be detected on the surface of the skin. In theory one could grab the two leads of a standard volt meter, one with each hand, and see the voltage change as their heart beats, but the fluctuations are rapid and by the time these signals reach the skin they are extremely weak (a few millionths of a volt) and difficult to detect with simple devices. Therefore, amplification is needed.

Amplification: A simple way to amplify the electrical difference between two points is to use a operational amplifier, otherwise known as an op-amp. The gain (multiplication factor) of an op-amp is controlled by varying the resistors attached to it, and an op-amp with a gain of 1000 will take a 1 millivolt signal and amplify it to 1 volt. There are many different types of microchip op-amps, and they’re often packaged with multiple op-amps in one chip (such as the quad-op-amp LM324), or the dual-op-amp lm358n). Any op-amp designed for low voltage will do for our purposes, and we only need one.

Noise: Unfortunately, the heart is not the only source of voltage on the skin. Radiation from a variety of things (computers, cell phones, lights, and especially the wiring in your walls) is absorbed by your skin and is measured with your ECG, in many cases masking your ECG in a sea of electrical noise. The traditional method of eliminating this noise is to use complicated analog circuitry, but since this noise has a characteristic, repeating, high-frequency wave pattern, it can be separated from the ECG (which is much slower in comparison) using digital signal processing computer software!

Digitization: Once amplified, the ECG signal along with a bunch of noise is in analog form. You could display the output with an oscilloscope, but to load it into your PC you need an analog-to-digital converter. Don’t worry! If you’ve got a sound card with a microphone input, you’ve already got one! It’s just that easy. We’ll simply wire the output of our ECG circuit to the input of our sound card, record the output of the op-amp using standard sound recording software, remove the noise from the ECG digitally, and output gorgeous ECG traces ready for visualization and analysis!

Parts/Cost

I’ll be upfront and say that I spent $0.00 making my ECG machine, because I was able to salvage all the parts I needed from a pile of old circuit boards. If you need specific components, check your local RadioShack. If that’s a no-go, hit-up Digikey (it’s probably cheaper too). Also, resistor values are flexible. Use mine as a good starter set, and vary them to suit your needs. If you buy everything from Digikey, the total cost of this project would be about $1. For now, here’s a list of all the parts you need:

Making the Device

Keep in mind that I’m not an electrical engineer (I have a masters in molecular biology but I’m currently a dental student if you must know) and I’m only reporting what worked well for me. I don’t claim this is perfect, and I’m certainly open for (and welcome) suggestions for improvement. With that in mind, here’s what I did!

This is pretty much it. First off is a power source. If you want to be safe, use three AAA batteries in series. If you’re a daredevil and enjoy showing off your ghettorigging skills, do what I did and grab 5v from a free USB plug! Mua ha ha ha. The power goes into the circuit and so do the leads/electrodes connected to the body. You can get pretty good results with only two leads, but if you want to experiment try hooking up an extra ground lead and slap it on your foot. More on the electrodes later. The signal from the leads is amplified by the circuit and put out the headphone cable, ready to enter your PC’s sound card through the microphone jack!

Note how I left room in the center of the circuit board. That was intentional! I wanted to expand this project by adding a microcontroller to do some on-board, real-time analysis. Specifically, an ATMega8! I never got around to it though. Its purpose would be to analyze the output of the op-amp and graph the ECG on a LCD screen, or at least measure the time between beats and display HR on a screen. (More ideas are at the bottom of this document.) Anyway, too much work for now, maybe I’ll do it one day in the future.

ECG circuit diagram:

This is the circuit diagram. This is a classical high-gain analog differential amplifier. It just outputs the multiplied difference of the inputs. The 0.1uF capacitor helps stabilize the signal and reduce high frequency noise (such as the audio produced by a nearby AM radio station). Use Google if you’re interested in learning exactly how it works.

ECG schematic:

This is how I used my LM358N to create the circuit above. Note that there is a small difference in my board from the photos and this diagram. This diagram is correct, but the circuit in some of the pictures is not. Briefly, when I built it I accidentally connected the (-) lead directly to ground, rather than to the appropriate pin on the microchip. This required me to place a 220kOhm between the leads to stabilize the signal. I imagine if you wire it CORRECTLY (as shown in these circuit diagrams) it will work fine, but if you find it too finicky (jumping quickly from too loud to too quiet), try tossing in a high-impedance resistor between the leads like I did. Overall, this circuit is extremely flexible and I encourage you to build it on a breadboard and try different things. Use this diagram as a starting point and experiment yourself!

The Electrodes:

You can make electrodes out of anything conductive. The most recent graphs were created from wires with gator clips on them clamping onto pennies (pictured). Yeah, I know I could solder directly to the pennies (they’re copper) but gator clips are fast, easy, and can be clipped to different materials (such as aluminum foil) for testing. A dot of moisturizing lotion applied to the pennies can be used to improve conduction between the pennies and the skin, but I didn’t find this to be very helpful. If pressed firmly on the body, conduction seems to be fine. Oh! I just remembered. USE ELECTRICAL TAPE TO ATTACH LEADS TO YOUR BODY! I tried a million different things, from rubber bands to packaging tape. The bottom line is that electrical tape is stretchy enough to be flexible, sticky enough not to fall off (even when moistened by the natural oils/sweat on your skin), and doesn’t hurt that bad to peel off.

Some of the best electrodes I used were made from aluminum cans! Rinse-out a soda can, cut it into “pads”, and use the sharp edge of a razor blade or pair of scissors to scrape off the wax coating on all contact surfaces. Although a little unconformable and prone to cut skin due to their sharp edges, these little guys work great!

Hooking it Up

This part is the most difficult part of the project! This circuit is extremely finicky. The best way to get it right is to open your sound editor (In Windows I use GoldWave because it’s simple, powerful, and free, but similar tools exist for Linux and other Unix-based OSes) and view the low-frequency bars in live mode while you set up. When neither electrode is touched, it should be relatively quiet. When only the + electrode is touched, it should go crazy with noise. When you touch both (one with each hand) the noise should start to go away, possibly varying by how much you squeeze (how good of a connection you have). The whole setup process is a game between too much and too little conduction. You’ll find that somewhere in the middle, you’ll see (and maybe hear) a low-frequency burst of noise once a second corresponding to your heartbeat. [note: Did you know that’s how the second was invented? I believe it was ] Once you get that good heartbeat, tape up your electrodes and start recording. If you can’t get it no matter what you do, start by putting the ground electrode in your mouth (yeah, I said it) and pressing the + electrode firmly and steadily on your chest. If that works (it almost always does), you know what to look for, so keep trying on your skin. For short recordings (maybe just a few beats) the mouth/chest method works beautifully, and requires far less noise reduction (if any), but is simply impractical for long-term recordings. I inside vs. outside potential is less susceptible to noise-causing electrical radiation. Perhaps other orifices would function similarly? I’ll leave it at that. I’ve also found that adding a third electrode (another ground) somewhere else on my body helps a little, but not significantly. Don’t give up at this step if you don’t get it right away! If you hear noise when + is touched, your circuit is working. Keep trying and you’ll get it eventually.

Recording the ECG

This is the easy part. Keep an eye on your “bars” display in the audio program to make sure something you’re doing (typing, clicking, etc) isn’t messing up the recording. If you want, try surfing the net or playing computer games to see how your heart varies. Make sure that as you tap the keyboard and click the mouse, you’re not getting noise back into your system. If this is a problem, try powering your device by batteries (a good idea for safety’s sake anyway) rather than another power source (such as USB power). Record as long as you want! Save the file as a standard, mono, wave file.

Digitally Eliminating Noise

Now it’s time to clean-up the trace. Using GoldWave, first apply a lowpass filter at 30 Hz. This kills most of your electrical noise (> 30hz), while leaving the ECG intact (< 15Hz). However, it dramatically decreases the volume (potential) of the audio file. Increase the volume as necessary to maximize the window with the ECG signal. You should see clear heartbeats at this point. You may want to apply an auto-gain filter to normalize the heartbeats potentials. Save the file as a raw sound file (.snd) at 1000 Hz (1 kHz) resolution.

Presentation and Analysis

Now you’re ready to analyze! Plop your .snd file in the same folder as my ecg.py script, edit the end of the script to reflect your .snd filename, and run the script by double-clicking it. (Keep in mind that my script was written for python 2.5.4 and requires numpy 1.3.0rc2 for python 2.5, and matplotlib 0.99 for python 2.5 - make sure you get the versions right!) Here’s what you’ll see!

This is a small region of the ECG trace. The “R” peak is most obvious, but the details of the other peaks are not as visible. If you want more definition in the trace (such as the blue one at the top of the page), consider applying a small collection of customized band-stop filters to the audio file rather than a single, sweeping lowpass filter. Refer to earlier posts in the DIY ECG category for details. Specifically, code on Circuits vs. Software for noise reduction entry can help. For our purposes, calculating heart rate from R-to-R intervals (RRIs) can be done accurately with traces such as this.

Your heart rate fluctuates a lot over time! By plotting the inverse of your RRIs, you can see your heart rate as a function of time. Investigate what makes it go up, go down, and how much. You’d be surprised by what you find. I found that checking my email raises my heart rate more than first-person-shooter video games. I get incredibly anxious when I check my mail these days, because I fear bad news from my new university (who knows why, I just get nervous about it). I wonder if accurate RRIs could be used to assess nervousness for the purposes of lie detection?

This is the RRI plot where the value of each RRI (in milliseconds) is represented for each beat. It’s basically the inverse of heart rate. Miscalculated heartbeats would show up as extremely high or extremely low dots on this graph. However, excluding points above or below certain bounds means that if your heart did double-beat, or skip a beat, you wouldn’t see it. Note that I just realized my axis label is wrong (it should be sec, not ms).

A Poincare Plot is a commonly-used method to visually assess heart rate variability as a function of RRIs. In this plot, each RRI is plotted against the RRI of the next subsequent beat. In a heart which beats at the same speed continuously, only a single dot would be visible in the center. In a heart which beats mostly-continuously, and only changes its rate very slowly, a linear line of dots would be visible in a 1:1 ratio. However, in real life the heart varies RRIs greatly from beat to beat, producing a small cloud of dots. The size of the cloud corresponds to the speed at which the autonomic nervous system can modulate heart rate in the time frame of a single beat.

The frequency of occurrence of various RRIs can be expressed by a histogram. The center peak corresponds to the standard heart rate. Peaks to the right and left of the center peak correspond to increased and decreased RRIs, respectively. A gross oversimplification of the interpretation of such data would be to state that the upper peak represents the cardio-inhibitory parasympathetic autonomic nervous system component, and the lower peak represents the cardio-stimulatory sympathetic autonomic nervous system component.

Taking the Fast Fourier Transformation of the data produces a unique trace whose significance is extremely difficult to interpret. Near 0Hz (infinite time) the trace heads toward ∞ (infinite power). To simplify the graph and eliminate the near-infinite, low-frequency peak we will normalize the trace by multiplying each data point by its frequency, and dividing the vertical axis units by Hz to compensate. This will produce the following graph…

This is the power spectrum density (PSD) plot of the ECG data we recorded. Its physiological interpretation is extraordinarily difficult to understand and confirm, and is the subject of great debate in the field of autonomic neurological cardiac regulation. An oversimplified explanation of the significance of this graph is that the parasympathetic (cardio-inhibitory) branch of the autonomic nervous system works faster than the sympathetic (cardio-stimulatory) branch. Therefore, the lower peak corresponds to the sympathetic component (combined with persistent parasympathetic input, it’s complicated), while the higher-frequency peak corresponds to the parasympathetic component, and the sympathetic/parasympathetic relationship can be assessed by the ratio of the integrated areas of these peaks after a complicated curve fitting processes which completely separates overlapping peaks. To learn more about power spectral analysis of heart rate over time in the frequency domain, I recommend skimming this introduction to heart rate variability website and the article on Heart Rate Variability following Myocardial Infarction (heart attack). Also, National Institute of Health (NIH) funded studies on HRV should be available from pubmed.org. If you want your head to explode, read Frequency-Domain Characteristics and Filtering of Blood Flow Following the Onset of Exercise: Implications for Kinetics Analysis for a lot of good frequency-domain-analysis-related discussion and rationalization.

Encouraging Words

Please, if you try this don’t die. The last thing I want is to have some kid calling me up and yelling at me that he nearly electrocuted himself when he tried to plug my device directly into a wall socket and now has to spend the rest of his life with two Abraham Lincolns tattooed onto his chest resembling a second set of nipples. Please, if you try this use common sense, and of course you’re responsible for your own actions. I provide this information as a description of what I did and what worked for me. If you make something similar that works, I’ve love to see it! Send in your pictures of your circuit, charts of your traces, improved code, or whatever you want and I’ll feature it on the site. GOOD LUCK!

More Complex Circuit

If you want to try this, go for it! Briefly, this circuit uses 6 op-amps to help eliminate effects of noise. It’s also safer, because of the diodes interconnecting the electrodes. It’s the same circuit as on [this page].

Miscellaneous Thoughts

SAMPLE FILTERED RECORDING:

I think this is the same one I used in the 3rd video from my single op-amp circuit. scottecg.snd It’s about an hour long, and in raw sound format (1000 Hz). It’s already been filtered (low-pass filtered at 30Hz). You can use it with my code below!

CODE

print "importing libraries..."
import numpy, pylab
print "DONE"

class ECG:

    def trim(self, data,degree=100):
        print 'trimming'
        i,data2=0,[]
        while i<len(data):
            data2.append(sum(data[i:i+degree])/degree)
            i+=degree
        return data2

    def smooth(self,list,degree=15):
        mults=[1]
        s=[]
        for i in range(degree): mults.append(mults[-1]+1)
        for i in range(degree): mults.append(mults[-1]-1)
        for i in range(len(list)-len(mults)):
            small=list[i:i+len(mults)]
            for j in range(len(small)):
                small[j]=small[j]*mults[j]
            val=sum(small)/sum(mults)
            s.append(val)
        return s

    def smoothWindow(self,list,degree=10):
        list2=[]
        for i in range(len(list)):
            list2.append(sum(list[i:i+degree])/float(degree))
        return list2

    def invertYs(self):
        print 'inverting'
        self.ys=self.ys*-1

    def takeDeriv(self,dist=5):
        print 'taking derivative'
        self.dys=[]
        for i in range(dist,len(self.ys)):
            self.dys.append(self.ys[i]-self.ys[i-dist])
        self.dxs=self.xs[0:len(self.dys)]

    def genXs(self, length, hz):
        print 'generating Xs'
        step = 1.0/(hz)
        xs=[]
        for i in range(length): xs.append(step*i)
        return xs

    def loadFile(self, fname, startAt=None, length=None, hz=1000):
        print 'loading',fname
        self.ys = numpy.memmap(fname, dtype='h', mode='r')*-1
        print 'read %d points.'%len(self.ys)
        self.xs = self.genXs(len(self.ys),hz)
        if startAt and length:
            self.ys=self.ys[startAt:startAt+length]
            self.xs=self.xs[startAt:startAt+length]

    def findBeats(self):
        print 'finding beats'
        self.bx,self.by=[],[]
        for i in range(100,len(self.ys)-100):
          if self.ys[i]<15000: continue # SET THIS VISUALLY
          if self.ys[i]<self.ys[i+1] or self.ys[i]<self.ys[i-1]: continue
          if self.ys[i]-self.ys[i-100]>5000 and self.ys[i]-self.ys[i+100]>5000:
              self.bx.append(self.xs[i])
              self.by.append(self.ys[i])
        print "found %d beats"%(len(self.bx))

    def genRRIs(self,fromText=False):
        print 'generating RRIs'
        self.rris=[]
        if fromText: mult=1
        else: 1000.0
        for i in range(1,len(self.bx)):
            rri=(self.bx[i]-self.bx[i-1])*mult
            #if fromText==False and len(self.rris)>1:
                #if abs(rri-self.rris[-1])>rri/2.0: continue
            #print i, "%.03ft%.03ft%.2f"%(bx[i],rri,60.0/rri)
            self.rris.append(rri)

    def removeOutliers(self):
        beatT=[]
        beatRRI=[]
        beatBPM=[]
        for i in range(1,len(self.rris)):
            #CHANGE THIS AS NEEDED
            if self.rris[i]<0.5 or self.rris[i]>1.1: continue
            if abs(self.rris[i]-self.rris[i-1])>self.rris[i-1]/5: continue
            beatT.append(self.bx[i])
            beatRRI.append(self.rris[i])
        self.bx=beatT
        self.rris=beatRRI

    def graphTrace(self):
        pylab.plot(self.xs,self.ys)
        #pylab.plot(self.xs[100000:100000+4000],self.ys[100000:100000+4000])
        pylab.title("Electrocardiograph")
        pylab.xlabel("Time (seconds)")
        pylab.ylabel("Potential (au)")

    def graphDeriv(self):
        pylab.plot(self.dxs,self.dys)
        pylab.xlabel("Time (seconds)")
        pylab.ylabel("d/dt Potential (au)")

    def graphBeats(self):
        pylab.plot(self.bx,self.by,'.')

    def graphRRIs(self):
        pylab.plot(self.bx,self.rris,'.')
        pylab.title("Beat Intervals")
        pylab.xlabel("Beat Number")
        pylab.ylabel("RRI (ms)")

    def graphHRs(self):
        #HR TREND
        hrs=(60.0/numpy.array(self.rris)).tolist()
        bxs=(numpy.array(self.bx[0:len(hrs)])/60.0).tolist()
        pylab.plot(bxs,hrs,'g',alpha=.2)
        hrs=self.smooth(hrs,10)
        bxs=bxs[10:len(hrs)+10]
        pylab.plot(bxs,hrs,'b')
        pylab.title("Heart Rate")
        pylab.xlabel("Time (minutes)")
        pylab.ylabel("HR (bpm)")

    def graphPoincare(self):
        #POINCARE PLOT
        pylab.plot(self.rris[1:],self.rris[:-1],"b.",alpha=.5)
        pylab.title("Poincare Plot")
        pylab.ylabel("RRI[i] (sec)")
        pylab.xlabel("RRI[i+1] (sec)")

    def graphFFT(self):
        #PSD ANALYSIS
        fft=numpy.fft.fft(numpy.array(self.rris)*1000.0)
        fftx=numpy.fft.fftfreq(len(self.rris),d=1)
        fftx,fft=fftx[1:len(fftx)/2],abs(fft[1:len(fft)/2])
        fft=self.smoothWindow(fft,15)
        pylab.plot(fftx[2:],fft[2:])
        pylab.title("Raw Power Sprectrum")
        pylab.ylabel("Power (ms^2)")
        pylab.xlabel("Frequency (Hz)")

    def graphFFT2(self):
        #PSD ANALYSIS
        fft=numpy.fft.fft(numpy.array(self.rris)*1000.0)
        fftx=numpy.fft.fftfreq(len(self.rris),d=1)
        fftx,fft=fftx[1:len(fftx)/2],abs(fft[1:len(fft)/2])
        fft=self.smoothWindow(fft,15)
        for i in range(len(fft)):
            fft[i]=fft[i]*fftx[i]
        pylab.plot(fftx[2:],fft[2:])
        pylab.title("Power Sprectrum Density")
        pylab.ylabel("Power (ms^2)/Hz")
        pylab.xlabel("Frequency (Hz)")

    def graphHisto(self):
        pylab.hist(self.rris,bins=20,ec='none')
        pylab.title("RRI Deviation Histogram")
        pylab.ylabel("Frequency (count)")
        pylab.xlabel("RRI (ms)")
        #pdf, bins, patches = pylab.hist(self.rris,bins=100,alpha=0)
        #pylab.plot(bins[1:],pdf,'g.')
        #y=self.smooth(list(pdf[1:]),10)
        #x=bins[10:len(y)+10]
        #pylab.plot(x,y)

    def saveBeats(self,fname):
        print "writing to",fname
        numpy.save(fname,[numpy.array(self.bx)])
        print "COMPLETE"

    def loadBeats(self,fname):
        print "loading data from",fname
        self.bx=numpy.load(fname)[0]
        print "loadded",len(self.bx),"beats"
        self.genRRIs(True)

def snd2txt(fname):
    ## SND TO TXT ##
    a=ECG()
    a.loadFile(fname)#,100000,4000)
    a.invertYs()
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphTrace()
    a.findBeats()
    a.graphBeats()
    a.saveBeats(fname)
    pylab.show()

def txt2graphs(fname):
    ## GRAPH TXT ##
    a=ECG()
    a.loadBeats(fname+'.npy')
    a.removeOutliers()
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphHRs();pylab.subplots_adjust(left=.1,bottom=.12,right=.96)
    pylab.savefig("DIY_ECG_Heart_Rate_Over_Time.png");
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphFFT();pylab.subplots_adjust(left=.13,bottom=.12,right=.96)
    pylab.savefig("DIY_ECG_Power_Spectrum_Raw.png");
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphFFT2();pylab.subplots_adjust(left=.13,bottom=.12,right=.96)
    pylab.savefig("DIY_ECG_Power_Spectrum_Weighted.png");
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphPoincare();pylab.subplots_adjust(left=.1,bottom=.12,right=.96)
    pylab.savefig("DIY_ECG_Poincare_Plot.png");
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphRRIs();pylab.subplots_adjust(left=.1,bottom=.12,right=.96)
    pylab.savefig("DIY_ECG_RR_Beat_Interval.png");
    pylab.figure(figsize=(7,4),dpi=100);pylab.grid(alpha=.2)
    a.graphHisto();pylab.subplots_adjust(left=.1,bottom=.12,right=.96)
    pylab.savefig("DIY_ECG_RR_Deviation_Histogram.png");
    pylab.show();

fname='publish_05_10min.snd' #CHANGE THIS AS NEEDED
#raw_input("npress ENTER to analyze %s..."%(fname))
snd2txt(fname)
#raw_input("npress ENTER to graph %s.npy..."%(fname))
txt2graphs(fname)

Improving ECG Reliability

⚠️ Check out my newer ECG designs:

Although I made a functional ECG circuit, it was extremely finicky. If you attached the electrodes too weakly (not a good enough connection), you would get no signal. If you attached the electrodes too tightly (too good of a connection), you wouldn’t get a signal either. You had to have just the right resistance between the electrodes and the body for them to work. I tried some things and finally discovered that a resistor between the circuit and me (on the ground lead) significantly improved the situation, but requires a really good body connection. My leads (2) were made from wires (non-shielded) with gator clips at the end clamping onto pennies. I added a dab of moisturizer to the pennies to get a really good connection and used electrical tape to attach them to my chest (+) and leg (GND). I recorded heart data in 10 minute blocks, and it worked amazingly well! Here is a video if me recording my ECG while playing Counter-Strike.

If you look closely you can see my heartbeat as the two leftmost bars on the display of the laptop. I’m continuing to work on this circuit, and will release details when it’s a little more complete. My plan is to write it up formally, provide a ton of examples/documentation, and really dive into the analysis aspect of it (RRI calculations, variability analysis, etc) and post it to Hackaday. DIY ECGs are nothing new, but no one who’s made one has really gone deep into its interpretation. My goal is to have this complete by next week! For now, enjoy the pretty videos.