We managed to obtain some actual ECG probes from the IHC in Provo, and hooked them up to our homemade ECG machine.  Our readings came out a bit better.  We kept thought we were runing into bugs, but it turns out we only thought it was messed up because we were using MY heart to test it out. (My heart is messed up, not our machine).

So here is my scan (click any of the images to see larger):


And here is Jake's:

    Today was a day of failures.  Until the end, that is.  My treo keyboard hack failed, my treo SD card fried, I didn't get as much work done as I would have liked, the computers at work kept getting their power cut, and everything else seemed to not be working out so well.

    Just in time for the holiday of hearts (St. Valentine's Day), I decided to make my very own ECG.  I stopped by the electronics store after work and picked up some parts to make a homemade ECG.  There was some store online selling a kit for like $45, but who wants to pay $45 when you can just go buy all the parts yourself and build it?!  Anyway, I got home and organized all my parts.  Then, I was so depressed I gave up.

    Fortunately Jake was nearby to pick up where I left off (at the beginning).  He redrew the schematic I had to make it easier to understand and started plugging the pieces into a project board he had.  In all, the project uses 24 resistors, 2 capacitors, 3 Dual Op-Amps and 6 diodes.  It was quite a bit of work, but Jake did it all, and I just bugged him every once in a while to see how he was doing (like the guy with the cool mustache in American Choppers).

    Meanwhile, I worked on some more projects that utterly failed.  Eh...I'll pick them back up later.  Anyway, around 9pm, our ECG was nearing completion.  We originally were going to use pennies as our probes (the part you stick on your chest), but we couldn't get the solder to stick to the pennies for some reason.  We had to jimmy rig it up, but finally we got out prototype.

    Click any image to see a larger version.


    I began wiring myself up, using some lotion to help the leads contact with my skin.  Now, I wouldn't recommend trying this at home.  Ultimately this device plugs into my computer, which plugs into the wall.  If there were a power surge or something went wrong, I supposed I could be electrocuted right across my heart, which would likely kill me.  For safety sake, we unplugged my computer and ran off battery during our first test.


    None of us thought it would work.  The electronics, although Jake did an excellent job, were pretty messy.  There is a lot of room in there for crossed circuits and the pieces are loose in some spots.  Nevertheless, we plugged it into my computer to try it out.  I downloaded some simple ECG software and we flipped it on.

    Lo and behold, it worked!

    When it comes time to clean, I get very creative about how to get out of it.  Tonight I was cleaning up my room , and I just couldn't help but get distracted by a project I had been thinking about.
   
    I got this old tablet PC (read: ~100Mhz AMD) from a room mate.  It's pretty slow, so I didn't know what to do with it exactly.  Tonight, I decided to make it into a framed photograph slideshow picture viewer thingy.

( pictures... )