This paper presents a photoplethysmography sensor based on a heart rate monitor for a portable MP3 player. Two major design issues are addressed: one is to acquire the sensor signal with a proper amplitude despite a wide range of variation and the other is to handle the noise contaminated signal which is caused by a motion artifact. A benchmarking test with a professional medical photoplethysmography sensor shows that our device performs very well in calculating heart rate even though our photoplethysmography sensor module was designed to be cost effective.