Just a few days ago, we reported on Bluetooth 4.0 support for medical devices, and now already the first heart rate monitor making use of it is being announced. Dayton Industrial is about to start production of a low energy heart-rate chest belt that uses the Nordic µBlue nRF8001 Bluetooth 4.0 chip. It should be able to pair with any Bluetooth 4.0 equipped smartphone (which are yet to be released) and paves the way for smartphone-based health and fitness monitoring apps and motivational social media data sharing that incorporate heart rate data.
From the press release:
The nRF8001’s class-leading ULP performance and size will enable the Dayton Bluetooth low energy heart-rate belt to run for up to 1.5 years from a CR2032 coin cell under typical usage conditions (1-hour per day) while featuring an extremely slim (1.1cm-thick) and compact (3.8 x 6.5 cm) plastic sensor housing that supports a soft fabric finished belt product weighing just 46g (less than the weight of two AA batteries).
Press release: World’s first production-ready Bluetooth low energy heart-rate belt will work with any Bluetooth version 4.0 smartphone or gadget…