Pulse Sensor Amped, Target Heart Rate, Lilypad

I am working on a project that I thought I solved the code for, but it doesn’t seem quite right. I’m hoping to have some experienced Arduino coding eyes look over my work and give some suggestions. Thanks in advance.

The Pulse Sensor Amped is connected to Lilypad Arduino (ATmega328). A single LED (pin 10) lights up when the user’s heartbeat is detected and blinks when target heart rate reached.

Using the Arduino file provided by Pulse Sensor website, I have the LED turn on when heart beat is detected by simply commenting out the low when the beat is over, and I added an ‘if’ statement to make the LED blink when the BPM meets or exceeds 133. Thing is, it seems because the interrupt is happening every 2ms, it should be a higher number. An additional clue was the delay I put on the LED blink is 5000 ms, but it blinks much faster in reality. When I converted the target heart rate to milliseconds, the LED never blinked after raising user’s heart rate for 20 minutes.

Is there a better way call the BPM and make the LED blink?

Here is the Interrupt with my changes:

volatile int rate[10];                    // array to hold last ten IBI values
volatile unsigned long sampleCounter = 0;          // used to determine pulse timing
volatile unsigned long lastBeatTime = 0;           // used to find IBI
volatile int P =512;                      // used to find peak in pulse wave, seeded
volatile int T = 512;                     // used to find trough in pulse wave, seeded
volatile int thresh = 512;                // used to find instant moment of heart beat, seeded
volatile int amp = 100;                   // used to hold amplitude of pulse waveform, seeded
volatile boolean firstBeat = true;        // used to seed rate array so we startup with reasonable BPM
volatile boolean secondBeat = false;      // used to seed rate array so we startup with reasonable BPM

void interruptSetup(){     
  // Initializes Timer2 to throw an interrupt every 2mS.
  TCCR2A = 0x02;     // DISABLE PWM ON DIGITAL PINS 3 AND 11, AND GO INTO CTC MODE
  TCCR2B = 0x05;     // DON'T FORCE COMPARE, 256 PRESCALER 
  OCR2A = 0X7C;      // SET THE TOP OF THE COUNT TO 124 FOR 500Hz SAMPLE RATE
  TIMSK2 = 0x02;     // ENABLE INTERRUPT ON MATCH BETWEEN TIMER2 AND OCR2A
  sei();             // MAKE SURE GLOBAL INTERRUPTS ARE ENABLED      
} 

// THIS IS THE TIMER 2 INTERRUPT SERVICE ROUTINE. 
// Timer 2 makes sure that we take a reading every 2 miliseconds
ISR(TIMER2_COMPA_vect){                         // triggered when Timer2 counts to 124
  cli();                                      // disable interrupts while we do this
  Signal = analogRead(pulsePin);              // read the Pulse Sensor 
  sampleCounter += 2;                         // keep track of the time in mS with this variable
  int N = sampleCounter - lastBeatTime;       // monitor the time since the last beat to avoid noise

    //  find the peak and trough of the pulse wave
  if(Signal < thresh && N > (IBI/5)*3){       // avoid dichrotic noise by waiting 3/5 of last IBI
    if (Signal < T){                        // T is the trough
      T = Signal;                         // keep track of lowest point in pulse wave 
    }
  }

  if(Signal > thresh && Signal > P){          // thresh condition helps avoid noise
    P = Signal;                             // P is the peak
  }                                        // keep track of highest point in pulse wave

  //  NOW IT'S TIME TO LOOK FOR THE HEART BEAT
  // signal surges up in value every time there is a pulse
  if (N > 250){                                   // avoid high frequency noise
    if ( (Signal > thresh) && (Pulse == false) && (N > (IBI/5)*3) ){        
      Pulse = true;                               // set the Pulse flag when we think there is a pulse
      digitalWrite(blinkPin,HIGH);                // turn on pin 10 LED
      IBI = sampleCounter - lastBeatTime;         // measure time between beats in mS
      lastBeatTime = sampleCounter;               // keep track of time for next pulse

      if(secondBeat){                        // if this is the second beat, if secondBeat == TRUE
        secondBeat = false;                  // clear secondBeat flag
        for(int i=0; i<=9; i++){             // seed the running total to get a realisitic BPM at startup
          rate[i] = IBI;                      
        }
      }

      if(firstBeat){                         // if it's the first time we found a beat, if firstBeat == TRUE
        firstBeat = false;                   // clear firstBeat flag
        secondBeat = true;                   // set the second beat flag
        sei();                               // enable interrupts again
        return;                              // IBI value is unreliable so discard it
      }   

      // keep a running total of the last 10 IBI values
      word runningTotal = 0;                  // clear the runningTotal variable    

      for(int i=0; i<=8; i++){                // shift data in the rate array
        rate[i] = rate[i+1];                  // and drop the oldest IBI value 
        runningTotal += rate[i];              // add up the 9 oldest IBI values
      }

      rate[9] = IBI;                          // add the latest IBI to the rate array
      runningTotal += rate[9];                // add the latest IBI to runningTotal
      runningTotal /= 10;                     // average the last 10 IBI values 
      BPM = 60000/runningTotal;               // how many beats can fit into a minute? that's BPM!
      QS = true;                              // set Quantified Self flag 
      // QS FLAG IS NOT CLEARED INSIDE THIS ISR
    }                       
  }
  //turns off pin 10
  if(Signal < thresh && Pulse == true){   // when the values are going down, the beat is over
    //digitalWrite(blinkPin,LOW);            // turn off pin 10 LED
    Pulse = false;                         // reset the Pulse flag so we can do it again
    amp = P - T;                           // get amplitude of the pulse wave
    thresh = amp/2 + T;                    // set thresh at 50% of the amplitude
    P = thresh;                            // reset these for next time
    T = thresh;
  }

  if (N > 2500){                           // if 2.5 seconds go by without a beat
    thresh = 512;                          // set thresh default
    P = 512;                               // set P default
    T = 512;                               // set T default
    lastBeatTime = sampleCounter;          // bring the lastBeatTime up to date        
    firstBeat = true;                      // set these to avoid noise
    secondBeat = false;                    // when we get the heartbeat back
}
  if(BPM>=133){                            // if target heart rate is found
    digitalWrite(blinkPin,LOW);            // turn off pin 10 LED
    delay(5000);                           // wait
    digitalWrite(blinkPin,HIGH);           // turn on pin 10 LED
    delay(5000);                           // wait
  }
  sei();                                   // enable interrupts when youre done!
}// end isr

You are missing some round brackets in some of your if-statements. It’s better to be forcing processing priority in your logical statements. Or else it makes decisions based on illogical garbage.

You have for-loops and multi-second delays inside an interrupt-routine that should run as short as possible. I don’t understand what you are trying to make this do. The interrupt should only start and retrieve the analog sample and store it in a buffer. (even that takes ages for an interrupt) Leave the detection of the pulses to your main loop code to do.

Yes, the ‘if’ statement I added should not have been in the Interrupt file. Thank you for pointing that out. It works better now. I appreciate your feedback!

You may also want to look at this …

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BlinkWithoutDelay

It seems even running the BlinkWithoutDelay is messing up the timing for the heart rate sensor. So, I changed the function all together and the LED will stay static, only turning on or off:

if(BPM>=133)

digitalWrite(ledPin2, HIGH);

else digitalWrite(ledPin2, LOW);

The Pulse Sensor Amped uses a robust series of interrupts and unsigned long variables that kept the BlinkWithoutDelay from working correctly. Perhaps another boolean would have worked, but my skills aren’t there yet. Thanks again for the help.