Brian Davis just wrote a great blog post on The NXT Step about testing the DI digital thermometers by measuring his body heat while mowing the lawn. The whole blog post can be found here.
He wrote:
Here’s where a small, flexible sensor can really shine. It’s been hot here in Indiana, but I still had to head outside today to mow the lawn… and wondered just how hot I was going to get. Not how hot it was outside (easy), but how hot I would be working out there (hard). So I stuck the NXT in a little fanny pack with the LEGO digital sensor sticking out to record air temperature, and using advanced bioadhesives* secured two DI “open” style thermistors to my body in protected areas. The result was that I could log an approximation of my core body temperature as I was working, and see how fast it warmed and how fast it dropped again when I stopped & went indoors to the air conditioning. This is probably not something I could have done easily with the “protected” or LEGO digital probe… but it was easy (actually, not even uncomfortable) with the small flexible “open” sensor. And it showed a number of interesting trends, including my core temperature rising but dropping back down rapidly after I entered the house.
It’s amazing what you can do with a simple set of sensors, when they are coupled to a flexible independant computer the size of your fist that can be programmed by a child :). Now, if I can just figure out how to rig a pulse monitor and respiration rate sensor…
Some cool looking data from the experiment is shown below.
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