Read underlying color/light data from Android Wear heart rate sensor?

Question

I'd like to read the heart rate sensor data on an Android Wear smartwatch. The documentation makes it seem like the heart rate sensor only reports two things:

1. Heart rate (in beats per minute)
2. Either an accuracy measure or an error code

Is it possible to get the Android Wear heart rate sensor's underlying data, i.e., the amount of red light (or green or blue light) at any point in time, which it uses to determine when the heart beats?

The Instant Heart Rate app gets color data from the camera (which I know is different from the Android Wear heart rate monitor), which it uses to display a graph of the heart rate:

I'd like to do a similar thing, but with the Android Wear's optical heart rate sensor instead of with the camera. In order to make the graph, I'd need to know the level of red light at any point in time, not just the beats-per-minute measure. Does anyone know if that's possible?

Vladikavkaz

This will be very useful for research purposes. I am seeking for similar thing. Did you find anything so far? – Foch

Answer 1

This will be dependent on the manufacturer exposing the data. I agree it could be very cool. For instance, reflectance could be used to analyze spectral data, and beat to beat variability is an indicator of health... Maybe submit a request to Android site to create an API for the raw sensor data?

Hindoo

Answer 2

I have responded to a similar question here: Android Wear: How to get raw PPG data?

Essentially, I was able to record the raw PPG signal from Huawei and Fossil watches. This will let you compute things like Spo2 and HRV.

Zed