Raspberry Pi Could Monitor Heart Rates Without Wearables

It's not unusual to see researchers and DIYers find new uses for the Raspberry Pi, but the potential in this latest discovery is a doozy. A research team created a method for detecting heart rates with Wi-Fi and showed that they can get their technique to work successfully on devices as small (and, crucially, low-power) as the Raspberry Pi. This is an exciting development, because it could open the way to monitoring heart rates with clinical accuracy—without attaching a physical sensor to a person.

The Pulse-Fi system, as the researchers dubbed it, detects changes in the radio frequency waves that a Wi-Fi radio emits. As the waves encounter your body, a device monitors the changed signal coming from your other side. The Pulse-F sorts data related to your heartbeat. The key, of course, is AI. As XDA notes, the researchers trained a machine-learning system to interpret the results ...