Hello all!
I’m working on a project to incorporate a variety of sensors into clothing for the purpose of gathering general data about the body. I’m hoping to end up with something that covers your whole body and gathers a constant stream of data.
So far I’m working on incorporating:
- Flex sensors to measure body movement such as: elbow and finger movement (gloves), knee movement and hip movement.
- Temperature monitoring at locations such as your torso and possibly your extremities i.e. legs and hands. I’ll use simple thermistor circuits for this.
- Heartbeat monitoring using a pulse sensor from: http://pulsesensor.com/
- Breath monitoring which would also possibly use flex sensors.
- Some form of system for monitoring sweat output. I’m thinking of making my own sensor which uses the conductivity of the salt content to predict how much is produced. I was thinking I could even use this to measure hydration levels?
-EMG monitoring such as shown here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Muscle-EMG-Sensor-for-a-Microcontroller/. This will be placed on key muscle groups such as the biceps, thighs, stomach and lower back.
I’ll be hooking all of this up to an arduino system (possibly Lilypad) which I can use as the main data processing hub using conductive thread to provide power and signal channelling.
This is mainly for general body monitoring for curiosities sake but I also want to do some experiments involving exercise, gait analysis etc.
One last thing is that I was thinking of using this type of thing as the base: http://www.zentaizone.com/black-lycra-spandex-zentai-with-detachable-hood-hands-feet-p-809.html
But I could also just use an under armour type base-layer and leggings.
What do you suggest?
I would love to hear some suggestions as to some possible sensors I could use for the above as well as some more suggestions as to other sensors and applications I could play with.
Thank you for any help!