I tried a different approach to my Instrumental Methods course this semester, which culminated in students building their own heart beat monitor using the Adafruit Feather M4 Express microcontroller. The project is an adaptation of this one from Analog Devices. The main part of the project was for students to add a voltage divider (which they have seen and used in previous projects during the semester), build the circuit on a breadboard and adjust a few of the components in light of the different voltage (3.3 V vs 5 V). Each student was successful in developing a device, and one was able to confirm that the pulse rate was consistent with the fit bit he was wearing.