Optical heart-rate and pulse-oximeter sensors (TI AFE440x, Maxim MAX3010x)
Tiny optical front-end chips that drive LEDs and read photodiodes to measure heart rate and blood-oxygen saturation. They appear in fitness wearables, medical pulse oximeters, and hobbyist health-monitoring boards, with parts from Texas Instruments (AFE4403/4404) and Maxim/Analog Devices (MAX30100/30102/30105) shipping from the mid-2010s onward.
recommendation
Worth keeping but document its niche because deployment is limited to embedded and wearable projects rather than mainstream PCs, and the chip lineup has mixed lifecycle status. The code is clearly still maintained, with cleanup patches landing as recently as 2025 for the AFE4404 and 2026 for the MAX30102. Vendor catalogs confirm the AFE4404 and MAX30102 are still sold new today, though some siblings like the MAX30105 are now obsolete.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
AFE4404 driver saw non-treewide maintenance in 2025 ('Use dev_err_probe() helper'), indicating active upstream attention.
- lore.kernel.org
MAX30102 driver saw targeted maintenance in 2026 ('Use IIO cleanup helpers'), indicating the directory is still maintained rather than abandoned.
- ti.com
TI lists AFE4404 as ACTIVE and orderable, so at least part of this directory's hardware was still sold new in 2025/2026.
- analog.com
Analog Devices lists MAX30102 as PRODUCTION with sample/buy options, supporting current new-hardware availability.
- analog.com
Analog Devices marks MAX30105 obsolete and recommends MAX30101 for future designs, showing mixed lifecycle status within the MAX3010x family handled here.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not a removal candidate: lore_file_timeline on afe4404.c and max3010x files showed recent 2025-2026 driver-specific fixes/cleanups and no removal evidence in returned history. Vendor availability was checked with web search: TI AFE4404 is ACTIVE/orderable; ADI MAX30102 is PRODUCTION; ADI MAX30105 is obsolete/NRND-like. Overall this is a small, niche embedded/wearable sensor directory with live upstream maintenance and at least some still-current parts, so keep it, but annotate that deployment is limited and lifecycle is mixed across chips. URLs were obtained via lore-http `lore_file_timeline` and `web.search_query`.