The list of components and code for making the system are both available. The new wearable system only requires two small sensors on the leg, a battery and a portable microcontroller (a small computer), and costs about $100 to make. Such setups are used to assess health and athletic performance, but they involve bulky, uncomfortable equipment and can be expensive. There are laboratory-grade systems that can accurately estimate how much energy a person burns during physical activity by measuring the rate of exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen in breath. This new measurement system features two sensors on the thigh and shank that are powered by a battery and controlled by a microcontroller, which could be replaced by a smartphone. (Consider how a cup of coffee can increase heart rate.) The researchers hypothesized that leg motion would be more telling-and their experiments confirmed that idea. “We built a compact system that we evaluated with a diverse group of participants to represent the US population and found that it does very well, with about one third the error of smartwatches,” says Patrick Slade, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Stanford University who is lead author of a paper on the work in Nature Communications.Ī crucial piece of this research was understanding a basic shortcoming of other wearables that count calories: they rely on wrist motion or heart rate, even though neither is especially indicative of energy expenditure.
Whereas smartwatches and smartphones tend to be off by about 40 to 80% when it comes to counting calories burned during an activity, this system averages 13% error.
#Calorie tracker device for free#
A system made with two inexpensive sensors is more accurate than smartwatches for tracking calories burned during activity, researchers reportĪnd the instructions for making the system yourself are available for free online.
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