Rate Meter

Rate Meter lets you determine the rate at which a repetitive event happens. For example, you can measure someone's breathing rate in breaths per minute (BPM) by tapping the app's event button each time the subject breathes. There's no need to wait and count for a minute -- Rate Meter reports the rate based on the most recent data. It also reports the average rate if you want improved precision.

Rate Meter offers an optional vibrating mode, so you can be certain that you pressed the event button.

This update now reports the standard error of the mean, e.g., rate = 12 +/- 2 BPM.

Reported unstable on Galaxy s7 with android 6.0.1.

Thanks for the nice reviews. Let me tell you the story behind this program. In January 2015, my mother died from complications of Alzheimer's disease. As she was dying, my father (a physician) and I (a patent litigator and a former physicist) monitored her comfort in the only way possible -- measuring her breathing rate. (When the pain increased, we called in the hospice nurse. Yay for hospice nurses! If you are facing the death of a loved one, please find a hospice group/nurse/facility.)

In principle, it's easy to do to measure someone's breathing rate. WikiHow says, "Observe the rise and fall of the victim's chest and count the number of respirations out loud for one full minute." But that isn't simple to do. The room is dim, you are looking at your wristwatch, and it's easy to mess up--or to worry you've messed up. A minute lasts a long time in this situation. And, you know that you can get a good estimate of the rate by counting for 20 seconds and the multiplying by 3, or counting for 15 seconds and multiplying by 4. But then, what's the error?

I wrote RateMeter to simplify this process. Please let me know if you use RateMeter when you are in a similarly hard spot. I welcome your suggestions.

Miles Finn