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3 Phila. Students Invent Smartphone Exercise App That Follows Your Heartbeat

By Ian Bush

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If your smartphone provides you the tunes for your exercise routine, some Philadelphia high school students have an app idea to make your music move right along with you.

Meet your new workout buddies: Destiny Garner, 16, of Overbrook High School; Jasmin Sewell, 16, of Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts; Symone Nelson, 17, of Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School; and Laxus Kidd, 18, of Thomas Edison High School.

Their summer project at Temple University's Urban Apps and Maps Studio is called "Heart Rate Headphones."

"Say your resting heart rate is between 60 and 100," explains Symone.  "It plays a slow song, like Adele."

(Someone Like You plays)

So that's for warming up, but once we really get moving...

"It plays an upbeat song like 'I'm Sexy and I Know It' [by LMFAO]."

The students have created their hardware-software app by mounting in Bluetooth headphones a sensor that reads your pulse behind your ear.

The app receives the info and then picks music to match your tempo.

The girls learned from Temple professors and PhD students the basics of electronics and computer programming to make this prototype, but left the hard stuff to them.

And they even have a business plan:

"First, we would just make it free to see if people would actually use it.  And then -- $2 to $3."

Throughout the day today, more than 100 high school students at Temple University showed off what they've worked on this summer with the Urban Apps and Maps Studios and Building Information Technology Skills (BITS).

The programs are funded by the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation, the Philadelphia Youth Network, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the US Economic Development Administration, to teach students how to build apps to help their communities.

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