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Muscle-sensing Myo Gesture Armband will be on Amazon this Quarter.
About a year after receiving our first taste of the Myo, Thalmic Labs has announced that it will be reaching to the masses through the use of Amazon this quarter. Like its pre-order on the website of the company, this muscle-sensing armband for controlling gestures will retail for $199. But even before that, Thalmic Labs has already sold 50,000 pre-orders (with approximately half shipped to buyers so far) this is an impressive nod to some of the use case examples showed off by Thalmic Labs and its several partners.
Gallery: Thalmic Labs' Myo armband at CES 2015. 5 Photos
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The Myo is an eight-muscle-sensing module that you can attach to the broadest part of your forearm. This allows the device to detect hand gestures. This includes squeezing your fist, spreading your hand and wagging your hands left or right, rotating your fist, or something as simple as a pinch with your thumb and another finger (which can be programmed to either activate or pause the Myo). Additionally you can also combine accelerometer, gyroscope and a magnetometer to detect your arm's movement.
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There is no power button on the Myo It wakes up when you pick it up, and it automatically goes back to sleep if left alone for a long time. A single charge should last somewhere between 10 to 14 hours if you use it continuously, which is quite impressive.
The communication protocol relies on Bluetooth LE, and there's a Myo Connect application that feeds the motion input back to the program or device you're controlling. In Thalmic Labs' demo room we had the opportunity to utilize the Myo to control the volume and playback of video on a PC, and an Orbotix Ollie rolling robot and Race The Sun, an addictive game of obstacle avoidance based on flight. Except for the connectivity issues with the Ollie, and the challenging nature of the game's scenarios the majority of the scenarios were easy for us.
We've previously seen Myo demos that included PowerPoint, iTunes, Call Of Duty, Parrot AR.Drone and various smart glasses. Users will be able to download apps "connectors" from the Myo Market to try out some of these applications and also to control Spotify, Netflix, Sonos plus popular games like Minecraft and Saints Row IV.
Thalmic Labs had impressive displays just before CES. In November, the company introduced TedCas' Myo integration, which allows surgeons to manipulate medical images without touching a monitor or a pointer device. The following month, Haute Technique shared its story on how it let Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren use the armband to control stage lights at his concerts. With major companies betting on gesture control this year, it'll be interesting to see if the folks behind gesture cameras are able to create something just as impressive.
Update The product page on Amazon is now up and running.