Gravity: Heart Rate Monitor Sensor for Arduino

INTRODUCTION

The DFRobot heart rate sensor is a thumb-sized heart rate monitor designed for Arduino microcontrollers.

This sensor is a pulse sensor which is developed based on PPG (PhotoPlethysmoGraphy) techniques. This is a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changing in the microvascular bed of tissues. It is relatively easy to detect the pulsatile component of the cardiac cycle according to this theory.
The sensor has two holes that you can use to attach to your belt. You can wrap on your finger, wrist, earlobe or other areas where it has contact with skin.To ease the difficult of using this sensor,  a Gravity Interface is adapted to allow plug&play.  The IO sensor shield is the best match for this sound senor connecting to your Arduino or other microcontroller. As this sensor can work at 3.3V which make it compatible with Raspberry Pi, intel edison, joule and curie.