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Measuring breathing patterns

Hi all,

I suffer from somewhat bad sleep, most likely because of an allergy. I very much would like to monitor my breathing at night to get a relation in between bad sleep and breathing problems.

I was thinking of doing this by measuring the temperature of the air getting out of mounth and/or nose.

This requires a fast and accurate temperature sensor. The output of this sensor will be connected to a A/D board connected to my PC.

Does anyone have any hints on what temperature sensor to use?

Thank you!

B.

Reply to
damn
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Why not use one of those strap thingies? It's a band you wrap around your chest, with a sensor that detects when it stretches when you inhale.

Or, for temperature, look up "thermistor".

Good Luck! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

No need to reinvent the wheel (badly):

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Reply to
JeffM

Well, for one, I'd like to see what happens with mount-breathing versus nose-breathing. The allergy blocks my nose, so I'd like to see how that interacts.

Thermistor: thx for the info!

B.

Reply to
damn

You can get a test done, where they wire you up and keep track of all of this while you sleep. It is used to diagnose apnea, which is fairly dangerous over a period of time.

One other thing to worry about is carpeting in the bedroom, and not washing your bedding often enough. The medical community recommends washing in 140F water every week. They also recommend getting rid of carpeting, and replacing it with a hard floor of some kind, which will not harbor mites, or the bacteria they themselves harbor. Apparently, this bacteria can cause breathing problems even in non-asthmatics. (I was just reading about all this while waiting in my doctor's office... ;)

--
Regards,
  Bob Monsen

"Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real
investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity."
 -- Charles Darwin
Reply to
Bob Monsen

A tiny bead thermistor works fine for this putpose - Use a resistor and the thermistor as a voltage divider feeding an adc from the center and using the driving voltage to the divider as the reference voltage to make it ratiometric. Then devise an algorithm to detect the increase in temperature as you exhale.

You don't need precision because you don't care what the actual temperature is, only the change. I use this technique in a product I sell to monitor respiration in anesthetized animals and using 10 bits I can very reliably detect breaths in animals ranging from tiny kittens to 250 pound St. Bernards.

Mark

Reply to
Mark

How true that is. Many folks stumble upon a concept and think that it is unique.

Reply to
Charles Schuler

Instead of a pc and a/d,, why not consider getting one of those $300 all night hart recorders for 42 dollars and create graphical data, real quick and easy

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Marc

Reply to
Marc Popek

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Reply to
damn

Awesome stuff, Mark, thx!!!

I ordered these:

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hopefully they will do the trick!

Reply to
damn

had three of those studies done, so that's pretty familiar to me :-)

the stuff you mention about the mites indeed confirms what my doctor advised me, next to buying special anti-mite bedstuff.

thx!

B.

Reply to
damn

thank you, but heartbeats have nothing to do with breathing I think.

The URL does not work unfortunately.

Bart

Reply to
damn

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Try this. I un-wrapped the URI but if your news client auto-wraps it will still fail. When that happens I copy-paste the broken URI into a text editor, fix it and copy that into a browser.

Reply to
Geoff

I haven't seen a clinician who worried about that. The indication of *good breathing* is **tidal volume**. . . BTW. have you considered following the standard practice and NOT top-posting?

Reply to
JeffM

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