Wearable Fitness Tracker - Senior Design Day

Project Overview

Our goal was to design a wearable fitness tracker that would interface with a mobile app. This app would allow the user to earn rewards to take care of a virtual pet by exercising while wearing the tracker. The idea behind creating the app was to develop a system of extrinsic motivation to keep a user on track with their fitness goals.

This project was completed by Rose McDonogh, Sharifa Sharfeldden, and Jessica Wang.

Application

We created our multiplatform mobile app in React Native. The app takes in exercise data and rewards the user with coins. These coins can then be used to purchase items to increase the pet’s stats and keep them happy and healthy.

Dress up your pet with all kinds of accessories!

Choose which pet you want to take care of!

Buy toys for your pet to keep them happy!

Feed your pet to ensure they are well taken care of!

Keep track of your exercise progress with these handy data visualizations!

Check the credits for info about the app!

Hardware

We used an Arduino Nano, DFRobot Heart Rate Monitor, Adafruit Flora Accelerometer, and Bluefruit Bluetooth LE to make up our wearable fitness tracker.

Starting from the upper left hand corner is the DFRobot Heart Rate Monitor, below that is the Arduino Nano where the fitness tracking Arduino program will be uploaded to the chip, inside the white box is the Adafruit Flora Accelerometer, and to the right of the white box is the Bluefruit Bluetooth LE.

The Arduino Nano is placed on top of the Accelerometer.

The Bluefruit is placed under the white box and held in place by the strapped-on Heart Rate Monitor. The user can slide their wrist under the black strap to interact with the Heart Rate sensor.

Accelerometer – Step Counting

Connections: SCL/SDA are connected to their Arduino Nano applicable pins, A5/A4. 3V is connected to 3.3V and GND is connected to GND on the Nano.

Program: This accelerometer is able to report the X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis direction acceleration in meters per seconds squared. The average of the acceleration in all directions was calculated using the following code:

Average = sqrt(X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2) where X, Y, and Z represent the value in that direction for that specific event. As the acceleration event is looped, these values will update.

With the determined threshold value for acceleration, the program decides what counts as a step and what does not. This process relies on the idea that to take a step, the individual has to decelerate and then accelerate. They come to a stop in order to take their next step.

The step counter is updated via a variable called ‘steps’ and this information is sent to the application periodically.

Bluefruit LE – UART Communication

Connections: Mode is connected to GND for Data Mode or the switch on the component was set to Data. GND is connected to GND and 3.3V is connected to 3.3V on the Nano. RX/TX are connected to the D1/D0 (otherwise labeled as TX1/RX0).

To send the heart rate and the step count to the application, this Bluetooth module is used with the hardware UART pins of the Nano. Initially, testing was conducted using the Adafruit Bluefruit Connect Android App where the Bluefruit could be connected wirelessly to an Android phone and the received information could be viewed in the App’s UART channel. To send information to the App, a serial write was performed after converting the integers to strings.

DFRobot Heart Rate Monitor – Heart Rate

Connections: A1 on the Nano is used as the heart rate pin. GND and 5V are connected to their respective Nano parts.

This sensor gets sampled values from the heart rate pin, A1 in this case, and calculates a heart rate value which is then sent via UART.

Final Thoughts

In this project, we learned about Arduino, app design, wearable devices, and of course, teamwork. Our final project includes a device that can accurately track and transmit step count and heart rate, and a working app complete with data visualization, multiple shops, and a currency system.

In an ideal semester, we would have loved to have guests try out our app, or provide a live demonstration. We hope that this page allows you to visualize the user experience that we have designed this year. Special thanks to our mentors, Professors Mottley and Phinney, without whom this project would not have been possible. And thanks to everyone else for a great four years!