App developers, researchers and quantified selfers have a new, cheap way to experiment with projects and applications that leverage data from body sensors with a kit developed in Portugal.
A hardware and software kit called BITalino includes a microcontroller unit, a battery block and a few different different physiological sensor modules that can be broken off and used individually or purchased in the form of an all-in-one board for prototyping.
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Sensors in the kit include can track muscle activation (electromyography), skin conductance (electrodermal activity), heart rate (electrocardiography), movement (accelerometry) and ambient light.
It also comes with real-time visualization software and Bluetooth connectivity. There are several APIs for the platform, including Androis OS and Java, project lead Hugo Silva told TechCrunch. A team at Instituto de Telecomunicacoes in Portugal developed the kit in collaboration with a biosignals company called PLUX.
For tinkerers and developers (and there are a lot of them), it could allow for even more possibilities than the Angel Sensor that I wrote about last month. In a research paper, BITalino’s developers say it can be used to “support classroom activities, interface with other devices, or perform rapid prototyping of end-user applications in the field of physiological computing.” It comes at a price of 149 Euros, or about $200.