Kardiobeats Heart Monitor is a heart monitor program I developed in C# on the UWP (Universal Windows Platform) API. I wanted this because I bought a Polar heart monitor that uses Bluetooth but I couldn’t find any decent windows apps to run it. I wanted something that I could run on one of my monitors than when I am in VR, open the desktop view and see my heart-rate.
The reason I had to develop this as a UWP program was because, at the time, it was the only way I could find to communicate with Bluetooth Low Energy in Windows. I had thought about making a REST server and then just sending the heart monitor information over to another program that works in the SteamVR dock, but I opted to just make a stand alone program since I can just leave it on one of my side monitors and still see it in VR.
The program features the ability to enter multiple user profiles with weight and age information for counting calories. Then I did some basic calculations to track calorie burn based on heart-rate. The graph updates in real time and the range can be adjust from about a minute up to a couple of hours. The screenshot show my heart-rate graph after a 40 min game of Gorn in VR. The quick spikes are just my chest based heart rate monitor strap moving away from my chest and gave me some bad data. I didn’t filter that kind of stuff so the min and max bpm are incorrect in this screenshot.