Different sensors used in fitness trackers

Different sensors used in fitness trackers   

          Smartwatches with Fitness trackers have become essential lifestyle devices that helps track how active you are along with basic health parameters.

The smartwatches do a lot more than showing time, show notifications on your wrist. They're everything in one: a fitness tracker, a wallet, and in some cases, even making phone calls.

            A smartwatch can also save your life with elevated heart rate alerts and automatically connect you to emergency services if you fall. Electrocardiogram (ECG) and blood oxygen (SpO2) readings are perks of certain premium models, too. It still has a compass, fall detection and GPS.

Following are the different sensors used in fitness trackers:

Ambient light sensor: This sensor is also used in mobile devices to increase or decrease the screen brightness, thus saving your battery life. This sensor tweaks display brightness based on the surrounding light for better battery life.

3 axis accelerometer: This is an electromechanical device that senses gravity, as well as linear accelerations, detects movement, and tracks direction. This track's forward and backward movement by sensing gravity and determine the body’s orientation, position, and also rate of change of speed.

Altimeter: This sensor uses atmospheric pressure to sense any changes in the altitude. Detects Change in height, are you climbing stairs or going down to calculate calories count. 

Barometer : This measures and shows the atmospheric pressure, thus you can know whether it is going to be sunny or rainy day.

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Optical heart rate: This sensor detects heartbeats per minute. The device with an optical HR sensor calculates your heartbeat  per minute using a special algorithm. This sensor uses light to check the speed of blood flow on the wrist. When the heartbeats, blood moves quickly inside thus less light is reflected back to the sensor and is detected as a heartbeat 

SpO2: This sensor used to monitor and measure blood oxygen levels. It uses LEDs as a light source to emit light into the tissue and a photodetector is used to collect the light back from the skin and measure how well the oxygen is supplied to each part of your body from your heart. 

Bioimpedance sensor: This sensor is used in Smart weighing scales to measure your body composition such as the total body fat w.r.t your lean body mass.

Proximity sensor : These sensors saves battery and wakes the display when needed.  It helps in lowering the power consumption by putting the device to sleep If you are not wearing the fitness tracker, this sensor enables the device to sleep and save battery when not in use and turns off display

Compass : It helps in direction and Maps. It shows the direction of magnetic north and bearings from it. A compass helps Map applications to run on a smartwatch and also gives the device a sense of direction.

ECG sensor: This sensor is to detect the minute electrical impulse that your heart sends out with every heartbeat This sensor detects this minute heart signal through the electrodes on the wearable.

GPS : It works by tracking your exact location while you are walking or running by calculating the distance between series of GPS satellites. It helps in detecting how much you are running, the location of wearable, and tracks your activity.

LTE : A LTE enabled device, simply means that is has built-in mobile connection i.e., you can make/receive calls directly from the device itself.

Gyroscope : Used to detect motion . It is used with other sensors to determine whether you are actually running or simply jogging.

UV sensor: It measures exposure to harmful sunlight. The UV sensor monitors the sunlight and alerts when you’re absorbing dangerous UV radiation whether the sunlight outdoors is harmful or not.

Magnetometer :  The sensor measures the magnetic field of the earth and can also be used as a compass. Works along with the GPS and compass to determine the exact  coordinates of your location 

Electrodermal activity sensor : It measure stress along with a heart rate tracker, ECG, and skin temperature sensor. It detects small electrical changes in the sweat level of your skin and helps you manage your stress.

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