Detecting expected patterns in repeated measurements
So far I learnt how to use basic filters to get rid of noise (moving average, exponential smoothing) 


Those are all low-pass filters! 


  checking sudden changes (difference between two successive filtered values) 


That is a high pass filter !

To be honest, I don't see "patterns" in your signal, the peaks are all pretty different, but you don't care for "patterns", either: 

You really are just interested in the signal that first passes through a low-pass filter, and then a high-pass filter.

Combined, that is a band-pass filter.

So if I'd recommend something: Look into filtering; understand the spectrum of signals, and understand how to build filters that extract specific signals from the original signal.