Activity Monitor (High-end)

Overview

Activity monitors (High-end) are devices that monitor a person's various daily activities. Unlike pedometers, activities other than walking, such as sitting at a desk or sleeping, can also be measured. This allows the number of calories consumed each day to be calculated. Thus, the use of activity monitors for health monitoring and dieting is spreading.

Since activity monitors need to be portable enough to be carried everywhere, small size and low power consumption for longer battery life are essential. In addition, since movements other than simple up-and-down motions need to be measured, the volume of data is very large and complicated calculations are required. The acceleration sensors contained in activity monitors may use any of a variety of methods to output serial data, so the microcontroller needs to be able to support various types of communication methods. In addition, support for communication functions such as USB and Bluetooth is needed so that activity, calorie consumption, and other data can be transferred to and managed on a personal computer or a mobile phone.

The Renesas 78K0/Lx3, the R8C/Lx and RL78/L1x Series have low power consumption and are capable of performing the complicated calculations required by activity monitors. These microcontrollers are also equipped with serial communication functions such as UART, I2C, and SSU (Synchronous Serial communication Unit), so they are capable of obtaining various kinds of data from acceleration sensors. Thanks to a built-in LCD drive circuit and peripheral functions such as an oscillator, a watchdog timer and a real-time clock, much fewer external parts than a pedometer are required, making more compact size and cost reduction possible