Recently, I have been putting new the sensor amplifier circuit through the paces. Most of the time it works great, and I am not willing to go back and change it, or else all of my development time would be wasted. I need to move forward fast to meet deadlines.

Before running tests, I usually have to open a raw data serial feed to make sure that the skin contacts are in a prime location, and that the sensor values have stopped moving around. That is a complex, wasteful solution. I won't have access to a serial port for debugging in the final version, and neither will the end user. Overall it makes a pretty bad product. Good connection with the skin is the number one thing that needs to happen in order for bioloop to be useful, and it is probably where most of the user error will stem from.

To solve this problem, I made a sketch that checks for proper contact and waits until the sensor values stop jumping around. It has a nice series of animations which display on the "X" display to guide the user through the process, running completely on the bioloop hardware. For now, it is a good test tool, and will eventually be integrated into the main version of the firmware. Using bioloop just got a little easier!