Features
Myo is a gesture control armband, that uses the electromyography (EMG) technology to read electrical signals from the muscles in your forearm to map them to gestures made with your arm. Additionally, a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer and a three-axis magnetometer sense motion in any direction. The muscle and motion activities are handled by an on-board processor (ARM Cortex M4) and sent to your device over Bluetooth. The rechargeable battery is claimed to last at least one day. The Myo can be connected to almost any Windows/Mac/iOS/Android based device supporting Bluetooth 4.0 LE, including the Google Glass.
Design
The design resembles a wide bracelet that fits about every size of forearm thanks to the stretchy bands. The Myo only weighs 93 grams and hence doesn’t hinder your arm movement. Moreover, you wont look stupid wearing the armband, as it is the case for the Emotiv Epoc helmet.
Setup and Calibration
Setting up and calibrating Myo is quite straightforward and guided by videos and desktop notifications.
Myo Market and Open API
Apart from controlling the mouse and the keyboard, the Myo marketplace offers a sizable amount of apps and plugins. You can download integrations for all kind of programs, games and utilities, even for controlling the Sphero robot or Parrot drones. And the market is growing rapidly due to the open API and the free SDK. Anyone can hence create an app or a plugin for the Myo. In addition to the small predefined set of gestures, you can define your own gestures using the SDK. Thalmic, the manufacturer of Myo, doesn’t really place any limits on how the armband can be used or what it can be used for.
Use cases in the ICT-WG
We started testing the Myo one week ago and have not been able yet to setup a specific smart home use-case. But one of the idea is to control the beamer, we have shown in the Thinkook video, and the Sonos in the kitchen with this armband. This set-up would be an alternative solution to the Thinkook.