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What could be better than a Halloween decoration? Something more perennial, or even something that could also be found in a classroom or lab. Something like [Markus Bindhammer]’s spooky muscle-brain interface. It was inspired by a series called “Tales From the Loop” in which a character’s muscle electrical activity is measured in preparation to adjust his prosthetic hand.

Essentially, it does what you think it does: attach the sensors to your muscles, move them around, and watch the brain light up. [Markus] started with a children’s learning kit that involves molding the brain and discs out of red rubbery goop, the vertebrae out of plaster, and then assembling the whole thing.

Instead, [Markus] molded the brain and vertebrae in two-part silicone for durability, and used two-component colored epoxy for the discs.

As the inspiring series is set in the 80s (we assume the brown, dingy 80s and not the fun, neon 80s), [Markus] gave the enclosure/stand an appropriate color scheme. Inside that box there’s an Arduino Pro Micro, a Grove EMG detector, and a mini step-up converter module. And of course, under the brain, there’s a NeoPixel ring. Don’t miss the build and demo video after the break.

There are a ton of things you can do with blinkenlights for Halloween. How about a light-up candy slide, or a bucket that seems them coming?

Brain-to-computer interfaces are nothing new, but they are often difficult to set up or use in more hobby-oriented applications. The team of Ezra Boley and Finn Kuusisto is setting out to change this with their FANTM EMG Arduino Uno shield. It uses a series of conductive pads that pick up electrical signals from a user’s muscles and feeds that data through a set of filters. Once read by the Arduino’s analog input pin, the values are stored within a buffer for later processing. 

The FANTM DEVLPR shield was designed to be open source, letting makers tinker with its layout, capabilities, and hardware. There is a 3mm jack where sensors can be attached, along with a potentiometer for adjusting the gain of the signal. Up to six shields can be stacked and fed into their own analog input pins. The code is open source too and in the form of an Arduino library for easily dropping into whatever application it might be needed. Users can pass their own callback functions via the API that get called when certain events occur, such as a muscle flexing or after an amount of time has transpired. The API also provides basic statistical methods to retrieve average, peak, and latest values. 

To see more about the FANTM DEVLPR Arduino shield, you can visit its website here.

The post The FANTM DEVLPR is an open source electromyography Arduino shield appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Inspired by an old Old Spice commercial, [Juliodb96] decided he too wanted to make music by flexing his muscles. An Arduino and a MyoWare sensor did the trick. However, he also tells you how to make your own sensors, if you are so inclined. You can see the instrument in action in the video below.

If you use the ready-made MyoWare sensors, this is a pretty easy project. You just respond to sensor input by playing some notes. If you decide to roll your own, you’ll have some circuit building ahead of you.

In particular, the signal conditioning for the sensors involves filtering to eliminate signals not in the 20 Hz to 300 Hz passband, several amplifiers, a rectifier, and a clipper. This requires 3 IC packages and a handful of discrete components.

Unlike the original commercial (see the second video, below), there are no moving parts for actuating actual instruments. However, that wouldn’t be hard to add with some servo motors, air pumps, and the like. This may seem frivolous, but we had to wonder if it could be used to allow musical expression for people who could not otherwise play an instrument.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the MyoWare in action. We’ve even talked about signal processing that is useful for this kind of application.

[Diego Marino] and his colleagues at the Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy) designed a prototype that allows for patients with motor deficits, such as spinal cord injury (SCI), to do rehabilitation via Functional Electrical Stimulation. They devised a system that records and interprets muscle signals from the physiotherapist and then stimulates specific muscles, in the patient, via an electro-stimulator.

The acquisition system is based on a BITalino board that records the Surface Electromyography (sEMG) signal from the muscles of the physiotherapist, while they perform a specific exercise designed for the patient’s rehabilitation plan. The BITalino uses Bluetooth to send the data to a PC where the data is properly crunched in Matlab in order to recognize and to isolate the muscular activity patterns.

After that, the signals are ‘replayed’ on the patient using a relay-board connected to a Globus Genesy 600 electro-stimulator. This relay board hack is mostly because the Globus Genesy is not programmable so this was a fast way for them to implement the stimulator. In their video we can see the muscle activation being replayed immediately after the ‘physiotherapist’ performs the movement. It’s clearly a prototype but it does show promising results.

It reminds us of the Myoelectric Hand, with humans instead. We featured an EMG tutorial a while back for those curious about this topic. Without taking the merit out of excellent and needed medical research, we all wait for the day that all our bio-signals can be easy read and translated to, let’s say, a huge avatar robot like METHOD-2. Right? Right?…


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Medical hacks

What with wearable tech, haptic feedback, implantable devices, and prosthetic limbs, the boundary between man and machine is getting harder and harder to discern. If you’re going to hack in this space, you’re going to need to know a little about electromyography, or the technique of sensing the electrical signals which make muscles fire. This handy tutorial on using an Arduino to capture EMG signals might be just the thing.

In an article written mainly as a tutorial to other physiatrists, [Dr. George Marzloff] covers some ground that will seem very basic to the seasoned hacker, but there are still valuable tidbits there. His tutorial build centers around a MyoWare Muscle Sensor and an Arduino Uno. The muscle sensor has snap connectors for three foam electrodes of the type used for electrocardiography, and outputs a rectified and integrated waveform that represents the envelope of the electrical signal traveling to a muscle. [Dr. Marzloff]’s simple sketch just reads the analog output of the sensor and lights an LED if it detects a muscle contraction, but the sky’s the limit once you have the basic EMG interface. Prosthetic limbs, wearable devices, diagnostic tools, virtual reality — the possibilities are endless.

We’ve seen a few EMG interfaces before, mainly of the homebrew type like this audio recorder recruited for EMG measurements. And be sure to check out [Bil Herd]’s in-depth discussion of digging EMG signals out of the noise.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Medical hacks
Giu
16

Open Source Prosthetic Hands Focus on Function and Personality

3D printing, arduino, ARM, EMG, hand, health, myoelectric, prosthetic, reddit Commenti disabilitati su Open Source Prosthetic Hands Focus on Function and Personality 

Exiii's Tetsuya Konishi, Genta Kondo, and Hiroshi YamauraA reddit user asked for workouts for his brother, who lost his hands. Another user responded with a 3D printed prosthetic.

Read more on MAKE

The post Open Source Prosthetic Hands Focus on Function and Personality appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

Mag
14

BITalino – Create projects with physiological sensors

arduino, biosignals, BITalino, diy, ECG, EDA, EMG, Flexible, module, printoo, Printoo's Commenti disabilitati su BITalino – Create projects with physiological sensors 

Printoo’s flexible modules provide the ideal form factor to quickly create first product concepts for smart wearables devices. BITalino (http://www.bitalino.com/) is revolutionizing DIY health tracking by making physiological sensors to measure the body’s biosignals accessible to all. Combine the two and it has never been easier to create revolutionary smart wearable concepts to life.

With Printoo, a number of inputs were already available: accelerometer, temperature sensor, capacitive and light sensors. BITalino’s modules for Electromyography (EMG), Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Electrocardiogram (ECG) can be easily connected to Printoo through a flexible coupling board. Combine these inputs with flexible LEDs (in strip or matrix form), electrochromic displays, a sound buzzer, as well as Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, and the possibilities are endless.

BITalino – Create projects with physiological sensors - [Link]

 

Gen
27

Open Source EMG Biosensor Coming to a Muscle Near You

arduino, biosensor, crowdfunding, Electronics, EMG, health, kickstarter, science, technology Commenti disabilitati su Open Source EMG Biosensor Coming to a Muscle Near You 

FlexVolt_DemoSignalUntil now, EMG equipment has been expensive and complicated. FlexVolt is hoping to make the technology accessible to anyone for under $100.

Read more on MAKE



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