Researchers built a wireless heart rate monitor with a Raspberry Pi and Wi-Fi - here's how

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Heartbeat data can be extracted from Wi-Fi CSI signals.
• Tested with ESP-32 modules and Raspberry Pi hardware.
• Accuracy reached 99.81% compared with medical methods.

Heart rate monitoring has been a mainstay of health and fitness, and while the stethoscope has given way to more precise electronic measuring devices, they've always involved wires and straps, or, in recent years, devices worn on the wrist or finger.

But what if there were a way to measure your heart rate wirelessly ... using Wi-Fi? 

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This is exactly what researchers at the University of California have pulled off recently.

Non-intrusive, continuous monitoring system

Using the way Wi-Fi signals permeate the environment, they analyzed how a beating human ...