In the early 1970s, computer technology enabled on-site data processing, some real-time analysis, and even graphical displays of metabolic variables, such as O, CO, and air-flow, thereby encouraging academic institutions to test accuracy and precision in new ways. A few years later in the decade, battery-operated systems made debuts. For example, a demonstration of the mobile system with digital display of both cumulative and past-minute oxygen consumption was presented in 1977 at the Proceedings of the Physiological Society. As manufacturing and computing costs dropped over the next few decades, various universal calibration methods for preparing and comparing various models in the 1990s brought attention to short-comings or advantages of various designs. In addition to lower costs, the metabolic variable CO was often ignored, promoting instead a focus on oxygen-consumption models of weight management and exercise training.
In the new millennium, smaller "desktop-sized" indirect calorimeters were being distributed with dedicated personal computers and printers, and running modern windows-based software.