Granted, 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? That’s right, take the electrical signal straight from the muscle and put it into your device. Thanks to shrinking amplifier technology, we can now do exactly that!
Measuring muscle activity by detecting its electric potential, referred to as electromyography (EMG), 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.
This sensor will measure the filtered and rectified electrical activity of a muscle; outputting 0-Vs Volts depending the amount of activity in the selected muscle, where Vs signifies the voltage of the power source. It’s that easy: stick on a few electrodes (not included), read the voltage out and flex some muscles!
Note: The Muscle Sensor v3 no longer includes biomedical sensor pads and cables as its previous version did. Both the pads and cable can be found in the Recommended Products section below to be purchased separately.
Dimensions
- 25.4 x 25.4 mm
Features
- Small Form Factor
- Specially Designed For Microcontrollers
- Adjustable Gain
- 3.5mm Connector
- Breadboard Compatible
- Power supply voltage: min. +-3.5V
Documents
- User Manual
- Schematic
- Arduino Example Code
- Processing Example Code
- Fabric Electrode Tutorial
- Iron Man Armor Tutorial
- GitHub (Example Code & Design Files)
