Recently I made shield for Arduino which can measure ECG, respiration, eventually after some changes in PCB and code, EEG and EMG. Big advantage of this shield is possibility to make it easily at home. The shield is equipped by display to show you measured signal real-time. Shield is based on AFE integrated circuit ADS1292R. You can use this shield for many application – acquiring your vital signs (or further operations with those signals – filtering, analysing etc.), modify shield for your own application, or just do it for fun with home PCB design and soldering:)
Important note: Don’t have your computer connected to the mains, when you acquire signal from anybody! This can´t be used as a diagnostic device, if you´ll see any abnormalities on your ECG its probably because me or you did some mistake during design this shield:)
Components needed:
- Arduino UNO
- ECG Arduino shield (instructions below)
- ECG cable (or any cable with crocodiles)
- ECG electrodes
- Display LCD 2.2″ SPI 176×220 (e.g. https://github.com/Nkawu/TFT_22_ILI9225)
Step 1: PCB Design – ECG Shield
For design of PCB I used great freeware SW CircuitMaker. Advantage of CircuitMaker is that all released PCB design are freely available, so you can use scheme and PCB. I designed and modify it exactly for your purposes or ideas. My PCB design is available here http://circuitmaker.com/User/0FAA9686-2FCB-4D39-8F… . During PCB design I came out mostly from datasheet and user guide. PCB has prepared button and one programmable diode waiting for your ideas:)
What wasn´t best idea is connector for display. I draw some paths on top layer, so its really hard to solder those paths to connector, when you have 2 layers PCB made at home. I would recommend to change PCB design or to use some extension between top layer and connector. Other thing suitable for improving would be connector for ECG cables:) I solder ecg cable, but maybe somebody would prefer removable connector.
I tried to do PCB as simple as possible to allow make it at home. I did that one on picture on CNC but I am sure you can use some other way mentioned here on instructable. Of course, it would be much better for signal noise if it would have more layers but that wouldn´t be that much fun:)
Read more: ECG Arduino Shield
