Overview
Physiology, made visible
Your heartbeat is continuous, automatic, and entirely invisible. This installation makes it seen, heard, and felt in real time, through the body of a translucent anatomical heart that literally glows to your pulse.
Designed and built for a competitive design exhibition, the Beat Boxt is an interactive biomedical art piece where a user places their finger on a PPG sensor, and the 3D-printed PETG heart begins to pulse with light at their exact cardiac rhythm. An LCD shows their live BPM; a speaker generates the characteristic hospital monitor tone, synchronized to each beat. The goal was to close the loop between physiology and perception - and to make biomedical technology feel alive.
Technical Design
Hardware, firmware, and form working as one
The heart form was modeled in Onshape using an existing template with wall thickness tuned so that natural PETG translucency creates a soft, organic glow rather than a harsh point-source effect. The heart was printed in translucent natural PETG and sanded to allow for even light diffusion.
An Arduino Nano runs a real-time loop using the PulseSensorPlayground library to read a PPG pulse sensor and detect the start of each heartbeat. On every detected beat, it flashes an LED inside the 3D-printed heart, updates a 16×2 LCD with live BPM, and triggers a short speaker beep to mimic a hospital-style heart monitor.
All electronics are housed in a custom 3D-printed enclosure designed to complement the heart piece aesthetically. The enclosure routes wiring cleanly and provides an ergonomic finger rest for the PPG sensor, making the interaction intuitive for exhibition visitors.
Outcomes
Recognition & impact
- Exhibited at a Lutron Lighting Competition, hosted by Boston University
- Firmware achieved reliable pulse detection across a range of user signal strengths
