Max30105 and Feather M0

Discussion Projects
1

Pirates, I’ve built Jiri Praus’s Beating LED Heart sculpture (Beating LED Heart : 10 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables) & am trying to wire it up with a Feather M0 and a max30102. I chose the Feather because 1) I had it on hand and 2) it has pass-through charging so would involve less work than Jiri’s masterpiece (I have no skill).

When using Jiri’s sketch I get LEDs to flash red for 20 seconds, then I don’t seem to be getting any reading from the max30102. Adding a print statement shows a zero value each time the irValue is read in the main loop.

I’ve tried SparkFun’s Arduino libraries, but I’m really not very familiar with Arduino. Results of trying their examples (Ex1 doesn’t work - when uncommenting SerialUSB as instructed I get: error: ‘SerialUSB’ was not declared in this ) are similar to Example2, which doesn’t output anything with the word ERROR, compiles, and uploads, but then shows about three screens of red output starting with this:
“Set binary mode
readWord(addr=0)=0x20002dd8
…”

I see the Pirates have a python library for their max30105. Again, I’m new at this so kindly excuse the n00b question. If I switch to Python, and buy and wire up this board, can I incorporate the Pimoroni library for max30105 into CircuitPython? I see how to pip install it for a Raspberry Pi, but if I use a Feather M0 is that code useful on that board, too?
Thanks for tolerating my cluelessness. Hoping to get this to work & if I do, I’ll be sure to share how I got it all done.

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So unfortunately Pimoroni’s library is a Python library for standard/CPython, whereas if you want to run this with a Feather you’ll need to use either Micro or CircuitPython. They’re very similar, but not the same and not always directly interchangeable. At a glance I dont see Micro/CircuitPython libraries for this device, so you might need to get it working with Arduino.

Is it a Sparkfun Max30150 that you have? I don’t have one but for what it’s worth, I get the same error as you when I uncomment SerialUSB, but it’s fine just using Serial. I can’t remember the exact ins and outs of the different types of Serial on these boards, but have you tried it without uncommenting that? It builds fine.

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Thanks for the advice, Pirates. I did finally get things to work. I likely fried one of my first boards, but the Feather F0 Bluefruit works with all of the libraries Jiri Praus used, and likely will work with your sensor. If it’s useful, I’ve shared info on how I pulled off my terribly soldered, elegant, but a bit more n00b-friendly adaptation of Jiri’s work:
https://gallaugher.medium.com/a-simplified-build-for-the-beating-led-heart-fb5b8549a809
Stay salty!
JG