Intro to Engineering Design: Electrocardiogram

"Students learn and use concepts and techniques in electrical circuit design and analysis, cardiac electrophysiology, biophysics, microcontrollers, and computer programming. Students work in teams to design, construct, and test circuit boards capable of measuring human electrocardiograms by capturing data with microcontroller, with computer analysis and display. Students present their designs orally and in writing."

In winter quarter of my sophomore year, I decided to take a 2 unit, student-run engineering design course where we built a working electrocardiogram from scratch. I learned so many useful skills such as circuitry, PCB design, and soldering, which are all topics I normally never would have learned as a sophomore.

Since this class had such a big impact on me, I decided to email the professor and ask if I could teach the class, and he agreed! Soon after, my co-mentor and I began to design our course. This is a ten-week course targeted toward engineering freshman, where they can learn important electrical engineering fundamentals, such as breadboards, Arduino, filters, operational amplifiers, PCB design on EAGLE, and more. Unfortunately, due to COVID, we are unable to teach the class this upcoming quarter but I am looking forward to the time I can meet my new students!

The ECG is first created on a breadboard and then printed circuit board.

ecgVid.mov

Video of the working ECG on a breadboard and signal on the Arduino serial plotter.

Schematic of electrocardiogram circuit

Board on Autodesk EAGLE

Students also have three weeks to work on an extension project of their own choice, which can be 3D printing a case, adding a LCD screen, or more!

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse