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Ending Page
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Arduino Circuit
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Starting Page
Inspiration
Students often push through stress, anxiety, and cognitive overload during studying and exams without realizing how much it affects their ability to learn. We noticed that while students track grades and deadlines, they rarely receive feedback about their mental or physiological state in the moment. We were inspired by the idea that heart rate can act as a simple, real-time signal of stress or focus. Our goal was to help students become more aware of their state and respond with small, meaningful actions that support learning rather than overwhelm it.
What it does
Learn from Your Heart is an educational support tool that uses real-time heart rate data to help students manage focus, stress, and test readiness. Using a heart rate sensor, the system reads a student’s BPM and translates it into short, actionable guidance designed specifically for studying and learning contexts. Instead of medical advice, the platform provides gentle focus resets, calming techniques, or readiness cues that help students regulate their mindset and return to learning more effectively.
How we built it
We built the project using a combination of hardware, backend services, AI, and a modern web frontend. A MAX30102 heart rate sensor connected to an Arduino collects BPM data and sends it over serial communication. A Python FastAPI backend listens to this data, processes it in real time, and sends it to the Gemini API using carefully designed prompts focused on education and student support. The frontend was built with React and Vite, presenting the heart rate and AI-generated guidance in a clean, calming interface designed to reduce cognitive load.
Challenges we ran into
One of our biggest challenges was integrating real-time sensor data with a live web application. Managing serial communication, timing, and ensuring the backend always had fresh heart rate data required careful coordination. We also encountered API authentication issues and had to debug AI response errors. Additionally, designing prompts that were helpful, concise, and non-medical took multiple iterations to strike the right balance between usefulness and simplicity.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of building a fully functional end to end system that connects physical hardware to AI driven educational support in real time. The project successfully transforms raw physiological data into meaningful, student focused guidance. We also take pride in the thoughtful UI design, which emphasizes calmness, clarity, and approachability, important qualities for students experiencing stress or pressure. Also, we were able to complete this project as a team of two students and build the entire system in less than 48 hours.
What we learned
Through this project, we learned how to integrate hardware with modern web technologies and manage real-time data flows across systems. We gained experience working with AI responsibly by constraining outputs to an educational domain and avoiding medical interpretations. Most importantly, we learned that small, well-designed interventions can have a meaningful impact on student focus and well-being.
What's next for Learn from Your Heart
In the future, we want to expand Learn from Your Heart by tracking trends over time to help students understand patterns in stress and focus. We plan to develop it into a wearable ring that provides real-time heart rate data, alongside personalized study recommendations, adaptive feedback based on individual baselines, and integrations with learning platforms. Long term, we hope to test the system with students and educators to refine its impact and explore how physiological feedback can meaningfully support learning at scale, with the ultimate goal of building a startup that brings this technology to students worldwide.
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