Mio Alpha Watch + Oculus Rift * Unity = Biofeedback

I have always been amused by VR and Biofeedback. I finally have a chance to do some R&D with Unity, the Oculus Rift, and the Mio Alpha Watch.

The Mio Alpha Watch is 99% accurate non invasive heart rate monitor. It works on bluetooth low energy. I was able to get that heart rate, my heart rate inside of my Unity Oculus Rift App. Because my Mac Book Pro does not have a Bluetooth LE Chip in it I went an outside the box route that I am now very proud of. Here were my steps of getting the Mio Alpha Heart Rate into Oculus Rift at a high level.

1). Turn on Mio Alpha Watch and let it find your heart rate.
2). Write Unity iOS Helper app with Alpha Mio Plugin (as the iPhone 5 has a Bluetooth LE chip)
3). Send the Beat to the iPhone and Display it in the App
4). From the iPhone in Obj-C, Update the BPM to a local server of person wearing the watch (Made a small sql database that holds a record of name and beat).
5). In the Oculus Mac App use the WWW class to pull down the beat from the local server.
6). You now have your heart beat and rate in the Oculus Mac App, time to be creative with what you can do with it.

The first thing I did is I wanted to "hear" my heart beat. I download a single beat sound, and every time the heart rate function triggered I played the sound. Running in place it would speed up, resting it would slow down.

I then started to play with ambient light and light intensity where if your heart rate was high it would have normal lighting but as you heart rate rested to zen like state the lights would intensify.

Here is a screenshot of the Alpha Mio Watch with the beat being sent to the iOS helper app.



Both the Watch, iOS App, and Text in the Oculus with the beat are all in sync.

More Screenshots to come.

Feedback and ideas welcome.

- Matt