Solar powered a wearable Electrocardiography (ECG) device with battery storage

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we propose a wearable ECG device that can be continuously powered by both the sun and artificial lighting via battery charging. The ECG signal acquired by the AD8232 wearable sensor associated with Arduino Nano is sent to the smartphone via Bluetooth. To study the feasibility of solar powered wearable gadget, we have conducted several experiments to analyze the charging speed in both outdoor and indoor conditions. For fully charging 1200 mAh battery, the two solar panels require periods of 5 - 11 hours and 1698 - 1942 hours for outdoor and indoor conditions respectively. The study has shown that the indoor charging is far ineffective as compared to outdoor charging due to spectral mismatch. The current consumption of the device is low and the fully charged battery can act as a buffer to sustain the device for 48 ∼ 60 hours without the need of any further charging.