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Description: 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? This is the MyoWare Muscle Sensor, an Arduino-powered, all-in-one electromyography (EMG) sensor from Advancer Technologies. The MyoWare board acts by measuring 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!
The MyoWare Muscle Sensor is the latest revision of the Muscle Sensor of old, now with a new wearable design that allows you to attach biomedical sensor pads directly to the board itself getting rid of those pesky cables. This new board also includes a slew of other new features including, single-supply voltage of +3.1V to +5V, RAW EMG output, polarity protected power pins, indicator LEDs, and (finally) an On/Off switch. Additionally, we have developed a few shields (Cable, Power, and Proto) that can attach to the Myoware Muscle Sensor to help increase its versatility and functionality!
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.
Note: Biomedical sensor pads can be found in the Recommended Products section below to be purchased separately.
Get Started with the MyoWare Muscle Sensor Guide
Dimensions: 0.82" x 2.06"
Features:
- Wearable Design
- Single Supply
- +2.9V to +5.7V
- Polarity reversal protection
- Two Output Modes
- EMG Envelope
- Raw EMG
- Expandable via Shields
- LED Indicators
- Specially Designed For Microcontrollers
- Adjustable Gain
Documents:
- User Manual
- MyoWare Sensor & Shields Guide
- Conductive Fabric Electrodes
- Arduino Example Code
- GitHub (Example Code & Design Files)
Customer Reviews
3.5 out of 5
Based on 4 ratings:
2 of 2 found this helpful:
Works Like Magic
Bought the myoware sensor for my class project and it works perfectly
Smart sensor for epileptic cesures
It is just the device that we need for our Project.
not all work
We purchased 6 for a lab class I’m teaching. Only 4 worked well. Other two were totally unreliable.
Sorry to hear about the issues with the sensors. Have you reached out to our technical support staff? They can help to troubleshoot your setup and get you replacement sensors for the class. You can reach them at techsupport@sparkfun.com
Didnt get it to work efficiently
The sensor works almost fine but the attached wire for the reference terminal is not too long enough so we are unable to get the required values accurately. Moreover, there is not provided any manual for specifically this model. We will be thankful to you if you people help us on its REAL TIME DATA acquisition.
Hi!
Have you contacted our technical support department over at Techsupport@sparkfun.com ? They can help you to troubleshoot and potentially help you out with your real time data acquisition if you reach out to them.
Related Tutorials
MyoWare Muscle Sensor Kit
March 17, 2016
Line of products to work with the MyoWare muscle sensor from Advancer Technologies
I bought this device along with the Myoware Cable Shield and my device is giving me incorrect readings. The red light to say that the “Muscle is contracting” is constantly on! Does anyone know why this is happening?
I am not sure if you have resolved the issue but did you try adjusting the gain? Try looking at my troubleshooting comment here => https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/myoware-muscle-sensor-kit/discuss#comment-58dd3817f3b1a87e608b4568 .
Is the isolation amplifier necessary if the USB port is plugged into a computer that is not connected to the power grid?
The sensor accompanies the Biomedical Sensor Pad?
i bought this kit from one week ago to read subvocal signal (signal from throat ) but it didn’t sense any signal from my throat . any idea,
Customers have used the MyoWare to measure vocal cord activation. You might want to double check your setup. Feel free to email us at support@advancer.co if you need help troubleshooting.
One complaint is that the connector that is supposed to be attached to the user’s bony area is way too short. There is not a good bony area that close to a large muscle (such as the bicep).
The reference electrode can be attached areas other than a bony area. It simply needs to be attached to an area that is adjacent to the muscle you are trying to measure. The function of this electrode is to align the sensor’s ground state with the ground state of the user’s body. Yes, a bony area is ideal because it does not produce electrical signals but it is by no means strictly required. For example, the sensor will work perfectly fine for the bicep if you place it along the inside of the user’s arm between the bicep and tricep.
Do you happen to know what the frequency range is and where the rolloff/cutoff points are set at?
Most of the filtering comes from the high CMRR of the AD8236 which will remove most noise artifacts common to both input electrodes such as the dreaded 50/60Hz electrical “hum”. Other than that there is a high pass filter that is used to remove DC offsets that can be present due to electrode polarization and skin dielectric characteristics. This HPF has a cutoff frequency of 0.33Hz. The EMG envelope output (SIG) has an integration circuit that has a cutoff frequency of 2Hz. (note: the Raw EMG output (RAW) does not go through this portion of the circuitry.)