Using our muscles to control things is the way that most of us are accustomed to doing it. We push buttons, pull levers, move joysticks... but what if we could take the buttons, levers and joysticks out of the equation and control it with our muscles? The MyoWare® 2.0 Muscle Sensor is an Arduino-compatible, all-in-one electromyography (EMG) sensor from Advancer Technologies that allows you to do just that! The MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensor has been redesigned from the ground up with a new easy-to-use, compact design and upgraded with the latest and greatest chipset improving sensor performance and reliability. The innovative snap connector system eliminates the need to solder connections for the MyoWare 2.0 ecosystem. It's that easy: stick on a few electrodes (not included), read the output voltage and flex some muscles!
The MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensor measures muscle activity through the electric potential of the muscle, commonly referred to as surface electromyography (EMG or sEMG for short). When your brain tells your muscle to flex, it sends an electrical signal to your muscle to start recruiting motor units (the bundles of muscle fibers that generate the force behind your muscles).
The harder you flex, the more motor units are recruited to generate great muscle force. The greater the number of motor units, the more the electrical activity of your muscle increases. MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensor will analyze the filtered and rectified electrical activity of a muscle and output a signal (0-VIN volts, where VIN signifies the voltage of the power source) that represents how hard the muscle is being flexed.
The MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensor builds upon its previous wearable design that allows you to attach biomedical sensor pads directly to the board itself, getting rid of those pesky cables. This board includes a single-supply voltage of +3.3V to +5V, three output modes, reverse polarity protected power pins, and indicator LEDs. Additionally, we have developed a few shields (such as the Cable, Power, and LED shields to name a few) that can attach to the MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensor to help increase its versatility and functionality! The muscle sensor’s snap connector system makes it easier to stack shields together. The top side connectors link to power and the sensor’s EMG envelope output while the bottom side links to the input electrodes.
Measuring muscle activity by detecting its electric potential has traditionally been used for medical research. However, with the advent of ever shrinking yet more powerful microcontrollers and integrated circuits, EMG circuits and sensors have found their way into all kinds of control systems such as video games, robotics, and prosthetics! Biomedical sensor pads can be found in the Recommended Products section below to be purchased separately.
Note: MyoWare and the Muscle Sensor are not intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation treatment, or prevention of disease, in a man or other animals.
The MyoWare® 2.0 ecosystem consists of shields that easily interface with the MyoWare® 2.0 Muscle Sensor, which is a low-cost, Arduino-compatible, all-in-one electromyography (EMG) sensor from Advancer Technologies. The innovative connector system allows users to easily snap shields together with a compact low profile and connect to a microcontroller's analog input to measure raw, filtered, and rectified electrical activity of a target muscle. This eliminates the need to solder connections between boards.
This product is a collaboration with Brian Kaminski from Advancer Technologies. A portion of each sales goes back to them for product support and continued development.
[1] Note: This product is patent protected. To prevent counterfeit boards, the Eagle design files and GitHub hardware repository are not shared for boards in the MyoWare 2.0 ecosystem.
If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about communication and code.
Skill Level: Rookie - You will need a better fundamental understand of what code is, and how it works. You will be using beginner-level software and development tools like Arduino. You will be dealing directly with code, but numerous examples and libraries are available. Sensors or shields will communicate with serial or TTL.
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If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Rookie - You may be required to know a bit more about the component, such as orientation, or how to hook it up, in addition to power requirements. You will need to understand polarized components.
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We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
Based on 4 ratings:
1 of 1 found this helpful:
Service, delivery, the hardware itself is perfectly fine.
However, at least for us to get it to work is just to complicated. Have to shave my arms and use sanding paper to get the sensor to sometimes work. It was worth a try, but the tech is just not there yet.
1 of 1 found this helpful:
Ordered several of these sensors for educational activities. We utilized the previous generation myoware sensor before this with good success and have a someone with background in physiology on the team. Our placement, preparation, and contact with the body and the sensor and electrodes was not the issue. We powered and attached to the Arduino as in the official schematic, used a laptop on battery (not plugged in), and were unable to read anything but constant voltage out on any of the sensors. We were not using anything but the base sensor it was properly powered. Used fresh electrodes while trouble shooting and finally plugged an old myoware sensor into the arduino setup just to make sure ( that one worked as expected). Looked at the raw and rms signals too with an scope those also are not reading anything meaningful. We have exhausted all troubleshooting tips and sources of error (The setup is pretty simple so there aren’t many) and now are pretty much down to a bad batch of sensors. We tested 5 different sensors from our order all with similar results used two different Arduino boards same result.
Drats! It sounds like they may be defective. Head over to www.sparkfun.com/returns and fill out the info and we can get ya squared away
0 of 1 found this helpful:
I bought the entire myoware set (led shield, cable shield etc) and the two myoware muscle sensors but both didn't work. I tried placing it on different parts of my forearm and bicep muscle but the sensors could not capture any signals. Still trying to figure out what the issue is.
I believe we're already talking via email about this; but if not, head over to www.sparkfun.com/returns and fill out the info and we can get ya squared away
0 of 1 found this helpful:
Both 2.0 sensors I received had issues during production, but since the sensor's predecessor worked so well I'm leaving a positive review with the hopes that they fix the problems quickly. Other EMG sensors are either too pricy, messy with their wiring, or outdated. The MyoWare design is really good so I hope they either re-release the previous sensor or fix the issues they had with this one.
Best regards.
Regarding the production problem with MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensors, what has happened with the possible solution, do you already have a release date for the version with corrections?
The MyoWare 2.0 Muscle Sensors board has a perfect design and the previous version is not available either. Some projects are still stalled for that reason.
Please let us know a tentative or next release date. What kind of solution, warranty or help can you offer to those of us who have this manufacturing fault?
PD: I am currently working on an application, I tested two versions of the Myoawwre card (New: DEV-18977 and Old:SEN-13723 ). In the photo that I add to this publication it is evident that the new version did not respond to my tests, on the other hand the previous version did not have any problem. It is important to note that I performed all the steps in the troubleshooting guide.