Don’t have a smart watch? This way you can measure your heart rate and breath with your mobile phone
If you’ve been angry all year and Santa Claus hasn’t given you a smart watch or a fitness bracelet under the tree, or you just don’t like wearing similar electronics on your wrist, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t “smart” get information about your health or current body values. All you need for some analyzes and measurements is your smartphone. The phone itself is quite common to have, for example, the number of steps taken when walking, but you knew that today it can measure heart rate and breath through the camera? Google Fit can do it.
Google Fit: Activity Tracking
Contents
How to measure heart rate and breath on your mobile via Google Fit
Breath measurement
Like heart rate analysis, this new feature on Google Fit has its own tab on the main screen, which you can find under the name Breath rate measurement. It uses a front camera, through which artificial intelligence has a task recognize even the smallest chest movements and determine breaths and exhalations accordingly. For example, you just need to lean the phone firmly on the table, point it frontally at the upper half of the body and start the measurement.
For the highest possible accuracy, it is of course advisable to breathe as “visibly” as possible, but the phone does not have a big problem with lifting and widening the chest. As with the heart rate, it is of course possible to perform measurements with ordinary stopwatches, but you can take this solution as an interesting smart option. In addition, with the option recorded save the results directly in the application.
Take it with a grain of salt
Only consider measurements with these methods as indicative, as they can cause very deviations very easily (eg by changing the environment, lighting or clothing).
Heart rate measurement
The application uses a main camera to analyze the heart rate and the principle of measurement is based on blood pulsation record (and thus more or less light) at your fingertips. In Google Fit, find the Heart Rate Monitor tab and tap Getting Started.
Among other things, the accompanying advisor will recommend that you perform the measurement in a well-lit place, which is needed just for sufficient “illumination” of the finger. Normally, however, the space under the bulb is enough when you point the camera with your finger at it. After a few seconds you will get the result that is quite accurate with regard to the method used. If you want to keep track, you can save your measurements to Google Fit.
