iCOBRA: A Smartphone Application for Monitoring Real-time Exercise Heart Rate using Color-coded System

Conventional heart rate monitors have been developed with numerical digital displays, and such display is not practical under most exercising condition. In this paper, a smartphone application which monitors exercising heart rate using a color-coding system is presented. A heart rate monitor for smartphone application was designed to communicate with the user the appropriate exercise intensity via the color-coding system. Three colors determine the user’s state of exercise intensity (i.e. green: optimal HR zone; yellow: HR less than optimal zone; and red: HR higher than optimal zone). The application (i.e. iCOBRA) programmed to display a uniform color across the smartphone display, enabling the user to easily be informed at a brief glance the state of exercise intensity. Reception of wireless HR data from the chest HR transmitter to the smartphone application was implemented using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology. The data was subsequently processed by the application to determine the range of HR exercise intensity based on user personal input (i.e. age, gender, fitness level, and exercise training objective). Preliminary analysis revealed that the application is effective in communicating real-time exercise HR intensity to the user. The application could potentially help athlete, active individual as well as the clinical population to monitor and regulate their exercise training regime in a more effective and safer manner.