Analysis of Amped Heart Rate Sensor Performance Under the Influence of Various External Factors and User Characteristics

Nowadays optical sensors in the form of wearable devices are omnipresent. People use them mainly to measure heart rate during everyday activities and often base their training schedules on these measurements. Therefore the performance of these devices should be reliable. Amped optical sensor is Arduino-dedicated device, widely used in DYI implementations of pulse meters. In this research the performance of this sensor was investigated under the influence of the following factors: contact force between the sensor and measurement site, low hand temperature, skin thickness, dark skin color, and various lighting conditions, namely without light, in artificial light, in daylight and with flashlight directed to the sensor. Obtained results show that there is no significant influence of the lighting conditions on the performance of investigated sensors, apart from the severe degradation of performance in case of strong light application to the measurement site. The significant decrease in the accuracy of the device was observed in case of users with dark skin color and with low hand temperature. The influence of skin thickness and contact force on the sensor performance was also detected.