When I heard about this app my first reaction was "stupid idea, it will never work". The app I am talking about is Instant Heart Rate (there are other similar apps too). The idea is that you use your smart phone's camera to measure your heart rate from your finger. Your finger changes its color a little when your heart beats, and the camera is supposed to notice this color change and measure your heart rate based on that.
As I said, stupid idea I thought, but I had to try. Here is how it looks like in practice:
As I said, stupid idea I thought, but I had to try. Here is how it looks like in practice:
After the first try it looked like the app did what it promised. It gave me some kind of heart rate as a result. But of course, the result couldn't be accurate, so I had to test it with my heart rate monitor:
Result was that the apps almost always gives the same result as the heart rate monitor. There were some small variations (1-4 beats / minute), but the app gave a really close results to the heart rate monitor. So, to my surprise, this seems to work after all! (Probably the results depend on the quality of your smart phone's camera, but with Galaxy S4 this seems to work).
But if and when you have a real heart rate monitor, why would you want to use a camera to measure a heart rate? Well, for one I don't always carry the heart rate monitor with me. And one particular application for me is to measure orthostatic heart rate, which tells how well you have recovered from an exercise.
The idea in orthostatic heart rate is the following:
The bigger the difference between resting and standing up is, the worse your recovery situation is. So if this difference is getting bigger, you should rest and not train. And the difference is small, you can train hard. Using the smart phone to do this measurement has been really easy.
In my case the results look like this:
But if and when you have a real heart rate monitor, why would you want to use a camera to measure a heart rate? Well, for one I don't always carry the heart rate monitor with me. And one particular application for me is to measure orthostatic heart rate, which tells how well you have recovered from an exercise.
The idea in orthostatic heart rate is the following:
- Measure your rest heart rate when you wake up, still laying on the bed
- Stand up, wait for 15 seconds, and measure your heart rate again
- Check what the difference is
The bigger the difference between resting and standing up is, the worse your recovery situation is. So if this difference is getting bigger, you should rest and not train. And the difference is small, you can train hard. Using the smart phone to do this measurement has been really easy.
In my case the results look like this:
So, I was really surprised how well the app worked. Of course, this doesn't replace your heart rate monitor when training, but it is nice to have an easy way to measure heart rate when your heart rate monitor isn't available.
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